The Speech that Wasn't (Part 1)

So here it what I wrote when I hit The Wall:

You will get a lot of questions from people that find out that you are building an airplane.

Some become routine.

Some test your ability to suppress an eye roll.

Examples of the suppressed eye roll variety are:

"When will it be done?"
"A real airplane?"
"Are you going to actually fly in it??"

And my personal favorite, usually asked rhetorically by everyone but your mother-in-law, is "Are you crazy??"

In some ways, the non-rhetorical answer is "Yes, I must be."

After a while you build up a library of ready answers for the most common questions, along with the ability to spit out a wordy “non-answer” answer when a factual answer would require too much time and effort, or worse, a commitment to a completion date.

It’s very much like the way that a politician answers questions. It’s like the “heat thunder” you sometimes hear in the summer: plenty of bluster, no rain.

The hardest question of all, though, is, "What's it like? What is building an airplane like?"

It's hard to answer that question because there is no simple, concise response that can truly convey what the experience is like. Most people have never tackled a project that requires the level of commitment, persistence, tenacity, frustration, elation, perspiration, dedication, and time that comes with the job of building an airplane.

There are parallels that can help people to understand, of course, but few of those examples will eventually result in a day when you are going to trust your very life to the end product. It is that aspect, I believe, that erects an insurmountable communication barrier between those that have, and those that have not.

It is important to understand that building an airplane is not just something that you are doing.
It becomes, to a very large degree, something that you have become. You become that neighbor, that friend, or that co-worker that everyone defines you, and often introduces you, with the singular trait “he’s building a plane in his garage.”

A project of this magnitude has a profound effect on your life. At work, at home, in the middle of the night when an anxiety attack resulting from an issue with the plane is keeping you awake - the project is always somewhere in your mind.

A bad day at work will often result in a bad day working on the airplane. A bad day working on the airplane can easily cause a bad day at home. It all becomes intertwined in personal relationships, work performance, and on any given day, your mood.

That goes both ways, though. The first time you step back from having placed the final rivet in something that actually looks like part of an airplane, or the first time you move the control stick and parts of the airplane move in response, or the first time you sit in it and make airplane noises.
The day you start the engine for the first time, and it sounds ever so much better than the pretend sounds.

These are the days that bring with them the sense of accomplishment and the pride of having actually created a part of something that hundreds, thousands of previous generations could only dream about. It will be reflected in your demeanor - you will be fairly vibrating with pride and excitement to the degree that people will be questioning what kind of wonderful drugs you're on.

And with each of those moments comes the understanding, the visceral knowledge that someday, someday, it will fly!

But even that glow is, of course, tempered by the immutable fact that you will be in it when it does.

That little demon is always in the back of your head, gnawing away at your elation.

That little demon has its purpose, though. There will be days of abject frustration. There will be parts of the project that are just plain hard. There will be temptation. "Screw it, this is good enough," the tempter will say. "Let's just get on to the next thing."
The little demon will have none of that.

These are the times when that little ******* is going to insist that you take a step back, maybe even take some time off, and come back refreshed and ready to do that task right.
He is there to remind you that someday you will be betting your very life on the quality of this work. And if that doesn't do the trick, he is not above reminding you that the airplane has a second seat which will someday be occupied by an innocent whose life is also riding on the same bet.

Is that an emotional burden that can be hard to carry? **** yes it is! It is part of the reason that building an airplane is not something you do, it is something you live. It is why even simple mistakes will plague your waking thoughts and disturb your sleep for days. And you will make mistakes.

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