Frustration

I wrote this while sitting at RHV, waiting for my examiner to return my call. She'd left me a message after I'd departed PAO, telling me the ceilings were too low to do the ride. That was at 11:00. By 12:30 or so, everything looked fine. I waited at RHV for 2 hours, and I called her back and left messages twice (plus once with no message). The bright side is that my landings were bad today, so maybe it's all for the best. Without further ado:

Frustration. Some people say that frustration is a low grade of anger. That may be true, but frustration is a lot more versatile than anger itself. Anger is all-consuming -- it's a powerful emotion that sends its owner into a positive reinforcement loop. Anger leads to power, power feels good, power enables more anger enables more power. Of course that is mitigated to some extent by the correspondingly enormous feeling of guilt it leaves in its wake, but that doesn't make it any less addictive -- an alcoholic doesn't stop drinking because he can't handle the hangover. And then there's the whole "hair of the dog" thing. Not good.

But frustration, even as a stop on the path to all-out anger, is more flexible. One can be, as I am now, frustrated, amused, and collected all at once. Frustration, and in particular MY frustration, has many causes, which are worth listing:

Poor communication
Currently, I'm at Reid-Hillview Airport awaiting a phone call from an FAA Designated Pilot Examiner. I was supposed to have my private pilot checkride today, and based on my judgment, the weather was OK to fly. But the Examiner called me after I'd taken off from Palo Alto, and left me a message to the effect that the weather was not adequate for flight. I wonder what I would've thought if I'd somehow received that message while I was in the air. Inadequate for flight? I wonder what it is I'm doing right now? Hopefully it's not like the Hitchhiker's Guide method; that thought alone could have sent me plummeting to the earth. NTSB report for cause of inadvertant spin: Pilot's momentary failure to believe in the possibility of flight.

Stupidity; or, rather, lack of forethought on the part of others
Nobody's perfect, and nobody can predict the future. However, it is pretty easy to limit the possibilities that could happen. For instance, I never put a cookbook on top of the stove. What if the wrong burner somehow gets turned on? At best, I lose a cookbook and stink up the house; at worst, the house burns down. It's not worth it. Probably this behavior would be described as "neurotic" but to some extent it is actually sensible. Now, if I get frustrated when other people display a lack of forethought, imagine how I must feel when I do something stupid. For instance, not calling the examiner before I left Palo Alto. I could have avoided this entire thing. Grr.

Expectations of me that are unreasonable
The key word here is "unreasonable." I don't get so upset when someone has expectations that are simply ridiculous or impossible; in that case, it becomes very easy to say, "That's impossible." Or just laugh. But it gets trickier when it's something that I could conceivably do, but not without having an impact on other things I'm doing, or possibly just causing an inconvenience.

The danger is when all of these factors hit at once. Note that I am not currently experiencing any expectations of me that are unreasonable (other than figuring out what the heck is going on without enough information, but that's more of a "poor communication" issue). Hence, I'm able to be frustrated, amused, and measured in my responses to people.

So, what comes next? I have no idea. It's past 1:00 (I've been here since 11:30) and I'm getting impatient so I might as well start getting ready to go home, back to Palo Alto. How incredibly disappointing today has been. I studied yesterday, I practiced this morning, I got nervous, I took the day off of work; I did everything right. Perhaps this is a case of MY expectations of something or someone else being unreasonable, which I can accept but I would like an explanation. Oh well; life doesn't always give us what we want, does it?