We're always in the witching hour
Issue 126
Hello friend, welcome to Scrap Facts. I’m Katherine, and I’m glad you’re here.
If you’re new here, welcome. This newsletter came about from my health reporter days when I wanted to find a way to give life to the fascinating tidbits that got cut from my stories. Now it’s evolved into a space where I write about what I learn wherever I can.
I abhor transitions.
I like change — that comes with the territory of being a curious person. But I prefer it when I am choosing (and in control of) the variety that I seek.
The main source of my discomfort with the practice of moving from A to B is the uncertainty of it. Usually, I spend so much time visualizing the destination — whether a physical location or metaphorical — that I forget that we are not actually entirely in control if we actually get there.
This is never more apparent to me than in the witching hour of air travel. The witching hour is supposed to be a time when supernatural spirits are at their strongest or most able to influence us. I think it’s actually a time when we’re most aware of our mortality and how little power we hold in the grand scheme of things.
Anyway, you know the one — it’s that time on a long-haul flight when every other soul is asleep, but you find yourself staring ahead at something out of focus. It’s not really an hour, but rather an eternity that defies the way we experience time on the ground.
I was recently flying to Santiago, Chile, when found myself caught in the witching hour. My eyes were itchy, my head heavy, and my legs restless as I was unable to sleep. I looked around with envy at all the other dozing passengers around me, all of us packed in like sardines, and sighed: There was nothing else to do but get up close and personal with my thoughts.
I’d been looking forward to this trip for weeks. I was visiting my spouse, and a country in a part of the world I had never been to! I was excited at the prospect of being together. If we had that, then we’d be sure to have a nice time.
But then thoughts wandered to the transition itself, from Washington to Santiago, from North America to South America, from Home to Away, and how, with the literal 30,000 - 40,000 ft. perspective, it all felt like a metaphor for all the intangible places I’m trying to reach, too.
In life, I’m not totally sure where I’m going — but it’s got to be somewhere, right? I’m trying to go to a version of myself who is faster, stronger, and wiser. Who is kinder and more empathetic — and who has figured out how to sustainably give the most to others while maintaining myself.
I’m trying to go from acquaintances to friends to maybe besties and beyond. I’m trying to go from writing on here once a month to book writing. I’m trying to further my career to share my values of harm reduction in health to the most influential audiences, who maybe can enact grand-scale change in how we treat others. I’m trying to go from younger to older, all the while renegotiating with my vanity about what constitutes beauty.
(Maybe all these other destinations are the reasons why I prefer to stay physically put. I take a long time to warm up to the idea of trips.)
On the plane in the dead of night (or morning, who knows?), I started to feel sweaty when I thought about how much of these journeys are so beyond my control. Even if I operate perfectly — and that’s a big “if” because I’m not even sure what constitutes as perfect — external factors will shape the final outcome.
At least on a flight, that’s a good thing. I have no pilot training, and relatively slow reflexes.
But in the rest of life? Who’s to say?
There is no such thing as not being in transition. Hell, in the time that it’s taken you to read this many of my words, dear reader, some of your trillions of cells have died, while others have been born. I am not the same person I was when I started this essay, and neither are you. That process is totally beyond our control.
I think the only reason it’s daunting to admit this is because we’re all constantly performing certainty. Maybe it’s an American culture thing, or maybe it’s a product of Instagram and other social media. It seems like we all have this desire to show others that we’ve Arrived, and that we’ve Made It, or if we are Working Toward Something, and we definitely absolutely know what that something is and how to get there.
I find myself grieving situations I can’t control a lot. They are transitions gone awry.
Lately for me, there has been a lot of grief on the grand scale. I grieve things like the literal lives lost due to the recent airplane collision near my home in D.C., those who lost their homes in natural disasters like the fires in L.A. I grieve the fact that this country’s political leadership is so much worse than I thought it could ever be.
But I also feel smaller grief interspersed here and there. I grieve the fact that some people in my life aren’t who I thought they were. I grieve the fact that I’m not different, so I could be more productive or less responsive to my feelings or even just more palatable to those whose approval I crave. I’m working on these things — it’s another journey.
There is one upside to living in transitions beyond our control, though. It has to do with the fact that, in my experience, we often dream too small for ourselves.
I would say that so far, my life has turned out about 25% of what I thought it would as I was younger. On paper, at least, I am still running, reading, and writing, and I’ve chosen to build a life with an academic. But in practice? No way — even my personality and my values don’t match up with my childhood iteration of myself. I suppose that’s growth.
For the most part, all of the differences between what I dreamt for myself and where I am now are better than I could have ever hoped. There are notable exceptions where things turned out for the worse, I’m sure of it. To be honest, I can’t think of them now.
Anyway, dear reader, I say all of this is a long way of saying: Try to enjoy the transitions, unpredictability and all. This is meant to be both inspirational, but it is also a threat: Given that we can’t stop them from coming, it seems to me like fighting the acceptance of the inevitable is a losing battle.
What else have I been up to?
Eventually, we made it through that awful witching hour. I landed in Santiago as the sun came up, and boy did I love Chile.
I have since returned home. Things are a little more routine here, but I’ve still been doing things I’ve never done before.
Like go to a screening of The Room with Greg Sostero (Mark)! Or hosting a screening of Napoleon Dynamite with Efren Ramirez (Pedro).
I also have been running — even in the cold. I was surprised to win my age group in a 5k yesterday. Wasn’t a personal best, but I’ll take the wins where I can find them. The course was very hilly, and I won $20!
I’ve been really into books with minimal plots lately. These stories, I find, focus more on the inner transitions of characters. Most recently, I loved Interesting Facts about Space by Emily Austin and How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz. The book Wellness by Nathan Hill tries also to do this, but to be honest I was less impressed; that didn’t need to be 600 pages long.
Follow me on Storygraph for more of my recent reads.
That’s all for now. Stay curious, friend! ❤️
Wanna keep in touch outside of this newsletter? Follow me on Twitter and Instagram.
I really enjoyed reading this! I resonate with nearly all of it, thank you for sharing.
I’ve never thought about this transitions vs. change but you nailed it !! Very perceptive, you’re a genius probably