War on Christmas

(If You Want It)

Now that the holidays have come
They can relax and watch the sun
Rise above all
of the beautiful things
They've done.
- Neil Young, “Here We Are in the Years”

Thank you to all of the people who are subscribing to this Substack. I hate writing, but I love having written, and so I appreciate having an audience and a deadline to keep me accountable.

I also appreciate the support for my various ventures and attempts to grow in ways beyond writing and performing standup comedy. I’m entering my second semester in film school, and the question I get most frequently is “What do you want to do when you graduate?” It’s also the question that gives me the most anxiety. Which is funny, because when I was younger I had very definite plans and schedules and firm ideas about what my life would look like.

And now, the only way I can explain where I am these days is to talk about the emotional journey of airline travel after the holidays.

We are at the end of December, the dead week after the emotional chaos of family, during the wild animal anxiety of traveling with large hordes, and right before our working lives begin anew.

There’s something about an airport - even though everybody at your gate has a guaranteed seat and a place for their things, there seems to be a mild and contagious free-floating panic that nothing will be real, that you won’t actually get to where you’re going until you’re sitting in your seat on your plane in the air.

I just flew home from NYC to Los Angeles. I’d picked Christmas Day to travel because day of a major holiday is usually one of the easiest to navigate an airport. I once flew out of Chicago on Thanksgiving Day and it was maybe the quickest, easiest trip I’ve ever taken through security - and I use Clear.

But following two days of flight cancellations, the Departure terminal at JFK’s Terminal 5 at 5:50 am was a mess of travelers who had already spent two days waiting to get out of New York City. I love NYC but when it’s time to go it’s time to go. So the regular security line was a mess of anxious angry travelers, many with small children in tow, and TSA agents who seemed to have had it.

The TSA security precheck line was somewhat better, but still wrapped around the terminal -there’s no Clear service at JFK’s Terminal 5. I want to take a second to extoll the genius of Clear, in which basically an airport concierge verifies your identity and escorts you to the front of the security line. You have to give over your fingerprints and eyescan, but after a lifetime of airport traveling I’d give my firstborn not to wait in any more 30 minute lines.

I digress. Fortunately I’d paid for JetBlue’s Priority security so I sailed through in a mere 25 minutes and got to the departure gate 20 minutes before my plane was due to take off. And it did - two hours later, because apparently our plane’s copilot hadn’t showed. And here’s my point:

For that two hours, a line of families with small children who had lined up early decided not to get out of that line, and I do mean not a single one was going to leave. Not because they were afraid of getting left behind but because they wanted to be first onboard. It was like they were waiting for the last helicopter out of Saigon.

When the copilot finally arrived and the plane was ready to board, as soon as the gate agent announced that they were boarding disabled passengers first, the families surged down the aisle like Irish refugees boarding a famine ship. When I finally got onboard myself, I found that not only was the plane not totally full, but I actually had an entire aisle to myself.

I had a great time seeing my family, and I realized that part of that was because we all mostly see eye-to-eye about politics and religion and whatnot. I realized while thinking about that that’s what this country has felt like since the 2015 election - like a large and ongoing family dinner where everybody had just gotten sick of each other and didn’t want to hear one more political opinion coming out of the mouth of that idiot cousin at the end of the table.

Looking to the New Year, I’m not sure what’s coming next. I’m making moves into the next phase of my life, and much like that airport anxiety, I know that I’m going somewhere and I know what I’d like my destination to be. But until I actually make touchdown, I’m going to always be a bit nervous that I’m not going to make it to the next phase, and despite knowing intellectually that life will make you progress sometimes against your will, I still have that nagging feeling that I’ll be stuck where I am forever.

Next week we will be back to the regular Wednesday e-mail schedule.