AOPA, and organization I consider to be a good one, recently contacted me to see if I was interested in blogging for them as a pilot-in-training. Naturally I was incredibly flattered. But it made me think long and hard about why I want to document this latest journey I’m on. The answers I found were surprising.
My blog is a stranger.
Well, not really a stranger, but it’s sort of like talking to one. Blogging has been a therapeutic and wonderfully cathartic part of my life for nearly the last five years. I started in September of 2003 and have kept at it ever since. And we’ve all heard the saying ‘it’s easier to talk to strangers’. There is a load of truth to that, and that’s how I see my blog.
I don’t know if I converse with my readers or I talk to myself when I blog. Having worked for a few companies both writing and blogging for them, I’ve always tried to blur the line between talking to others and talking to myself when I write, no matter which publication it is. Somehow, the murky space between the two seems to work. I suppose if it didn’t work I wouldn’t have gotten paid to do it, and organizations like AOPA wouldn’t be asking me to write for them.
But flying.radiopeter.com is different. Sorta.
Usually my personal journeys are tracked on on regular old, comfortable, social, and laid-back radiopeter.com. I learned Japanese there. I got into cycling there. I’ve been through relationships, sickness and health, happiness and sadness, found life on stage and off, and experienced nearly every emotion close to five years of life has to offer. All that is recorded there. Except right now, flying doesn’t seem to fit.
But why? Why should this project differ?
More than anything else, this is going to be an intensely personal journey. I’m not trying to wax philosophical, but the more I learn about flying and the more time I spend in X-Plane (hey, it’s the best I have at the moment), the more I’m realizing this is going to be an intense experience. It seems like life has been preparing me for this for a while. It deserves it’s own place in my history. And honestly, it’s too personal to give away to an organization to help bulk up their content.
So the answer, in case you haven’t read between the lines, is that I will not be blogging for AOPA. I’ll be blogging my journey toward the sky here.
For me, for you, and for the stranger and friend that is the internet.