Finding A Good Heading
The Flight
Imagine for a moment that you are a pilot flying a plane over the Atlantic. Your plane has a finite amount of fuel in its tanks, and the passengers have connecting flights to get to. Actually, make the picture a little more risk-filled. Let's imagine you are the pilot of a plane in the earlier 20th century, and you are attempting the first transatlantic flight. There are no documents of exactly how many miles across the ocean is. What you do know is that the European coast is not straight, and neither is the American coast. You are flying with just instruments, so you know airspeed, the direction on your compass, and if you are tracking or have a navigator in the co-pilot chair, you are keeping track of your heading in a set sequence of progressive minutes. For the sake of this exercise, let's say 30 minutes.
The Cockpit
Imagine the heading chart your navigator is drawing out. Ideally, before you even start the flight, you would hope that the line that ends up being drawn is closest to a straight line. After all, every curve and shift in direction is adding time and fuel to your flight. Remember, you have a limited amount of fuel, and passengers who have specific time windows. Well, I forgot, we switched the picture. Perhaps in an exploratory flight you would not have passengers, but for the sake of this exercise, let's assume you brought a few people along. I am assuming you have a lot of confidence in your abilities, but that is perfectly fine. The next time you do the flight, you will be even more confident to bring even more people along. As long as the flight goes well (fingers crossed). Do you feel your hands sweat a little bit on the controls?
The Map
You start the flight, and at first you keep heading straight on east (we're going from America to Europe, by the way. The reason is arbitrary). But then, as you go along, there are questions that start to arise. Is the American coast on the same level, north or south, as the European? Are there any potential refueling points on islands? Perhaps those are further south. If we have to make an emergency landing, would it be better to be above warmer waters? Then again, knowing how the equator makes the journey longer, maybe we should head north to shorten the distance around the globe. These are many questions, that at first glance seem to have the same goal, but also conflict with each other.
Time To Decide
Let's imagine also that instead of brainstorming all these ideas hypothetically, but actually pursuing all of them partially, in a mindset that is both open to new options and also indecisive. Imagine the line on the navigator's page. The line is getting more squiggly, with more bends and shifts in the line's trajectory. The lines may not be overlapping, but at times they get closer to each other. Fuel is at a constant burn, so we are losing more fuel per mile forward than we need to. And time is also being burned. At a certain point, the plane's crew has to make a decision : which strategy do we go all in on, and then hope and pray that we still have enough fuel to reach a shoreline? Depending on what strategy was tried last, that last trial might end up being the best to start at. Each restart of strategy requires the heading on the map to change direction, then burn fuel to head to the new approach. Finally, this pilot crew decides to go southeast a small portion, and then due east. Now, it is very easy from our vantage point, those of us who have Google Maps on our phone and can simply pick apart the options with all sorts of precision tools, and all sorts of time to lay out scenarios, to judge the decision harshly. But remember, when you are actually in the cockpit, with the fuel tank emptying, what matters more than perfection and accuracy is conviction and focused action.
Analogies to Realities
Now, we just went on this journey together about a plane and a crew over the Atlantic, but what am I really talking about? I use this illustration to point to the place in life I am in, in regards to career trajectory and vocational position and purpose. To be clear, I am already very fulfilled in my life. I married my sweetheart, we made a beautiful daughter together, and I spend most of everyday showing my cute little nugget (my daughter really is so cute, and so full of joy) the world we live in. And then in the middle of the day, when I have a few hours to use for something else, I feel like that pilot and navigator suspended 10,000 feet in the air, running out of time to pick a direction, with the sobriety of resource and time, slowly but surely, dwindling. Time does not stop, as much as I wish it would. The space of hesitation and indecision actually consumes time and resource. It costs my wife to give me a break in the mid-day, it usually costs me a few bucks of gas and tea to go to a nearby coffeeshop to write and contemplate. Even if I am working at home, technically I eat more when I am in a focused flow state.
Presently, I have multiple potential trajectories (or headings) laying in front of me on the map. I could spend so much time testing each one, trying them out to see if they hold value, but the more I do that, the more that line on the map gets more squiggly. Sometimes, I can actually be going in circles.
If the goal is to go far, why keep shifting direction?
So, here is one of the purposes of my publishing to this blog. I will be laying out some potential directions, but will in short order be pairing it down, looking for that clear way “East”. For those of you that find observing that process valuable, this will be fun! For those looking for the Cliff Notes “where does this story end?”, perhaps give me 6 months. Maybe even a year. I hope it will be less than either of those guesses. I am ready to go far, and the fuel is burning. But I am hopeful, nonetheless.
- Jordan Sampson - Time : 2025.9.4 10:12 PM Wichita
title : "if the goal is to go far..."