How dumb was my day yesterday? I had to get up at 5am to catch a 7am flight down to Atlanta, in order to connect to another flight at 10:30 to get to a much smaller city. So I get to the airport at 6:15 in a daze and I’m sitting on the plane at 6:40am. So far so good. At 8am, I’m still sitting on the plane in Boston because of weather delays in DC/NY and I’m thinking “well, it’s cutting it close, but if we leave in the next 15 minutes, I should make it to my connecting flight.” We’re finally cleared for takeoff around 8:20. It’s going to be real close.

We fly around the weather in DC/NY, which adds time and we touch ground in Atlanta at 10:25. This is where I start to wonder why – for ALL flights – they don’t unload the plane from the front and the back instead of just the front. I’ve never understood this. I step off the plane, look up at the monitor……and see that my connecting flight departed 4 minutes prior. The next flight to that “much smaller city” is at 3pm and doesn’t land until 4pm and my meeting is at 2. Look at some other options to nearby cities – nothing available. I’m screwed. I’ll have to dial-in to the meeting, which I hate doing. By 11:10, just 30 minutes after I arrived from Boston, I’m sitting on a plane back to Boston.

Great day so far! Get up at 5am, fly to Atlanta at 7am, walk off the plane, then get on another one right back to where I came from. Very productive. My plane lands at 1:45 and I end up sitting on the floor at Gate 27 of Terminal A at Logan Airport dialed into this call. Of course, the meeting is held in a large conference room and I cannot hear half the people in attendance. I’m tired and bordering on frustrated. My contacts are drying out.

But a series of events recently have produced a self-inflicted vow to no longer get too stressed, upset or overly frustrated about things I just can’t control. Weather. Airlines. Work. Barely discernable speaker phones in meetings. Hey, it happens. It just happens. It’s not worth the stress. Trust me on that one. Really.