I’m traveling for work today. Just a quick trip, a quick meeting, but I’m in the midwest. Thinking back on other trips like this, I’m reminded of a passage from Fight Club –

You wake up at Seatac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O’Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, Mountain, Central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbor International. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?

I don’t mean to say that all cities are the same, but when you fly into airports and drive to nearby hotels, there is a certain sameness to it all. To the airport gates and moving walkways and baggage claim areas. To the highways and overpasses and industrial sites and strip malls leading out of them. To the hotels. Even as we were driving into the city, it had a certain sameness to it. The skyline was different, the buildings in different shapes and configurations, but it still felt the same. Cincinnati, Little Rock, Baltimore, Columbus, and more all blending together. And I know there’s more to these places than what I’m seeing, these little glimpses, little slices, but for this small amount of time, it lacks any sense of being unique.

I’m not fond of airports, and these days travel seems even more onerous than it always did, but one of the nice side effects is that it forces you to slow down. There’s the trip to the airport. The lines through security. The waiting at the gate. Waiting on the plane. Flying. Waiting again. Then the trip off and to your destination. And while I listen to things when I can, and read when I can, there’s a lot of time. Time leads to thinking. Thinking leads to ideas.

This trip I came up with at least three different story ideas I want to write. One for a YA novel (that I now really want to write), one for a short story, and another for a short story idea I was trying to develop. As much as I hate travel sometimes, that almost makes it worthwhile.

In the meantime, I’m using my time in the hotel to get some more words down while I’m out of the house. Might as well make the best of it, right?