Well, here I am again. And by here, I mean, sitting in my seat on an airplane, vaguely sweaty and slightly nauseous having just sprinted about a mile and downed a 20 oz cup of coffee in approximately 4 minutes.

It’s actually baffling to me how often I’m in this situation. I do this thing if I really want a scenario to go a certain way: I visualize the outcome and then practice. The airport scenario is one I really want to go a certain way. It’s a scenario I’ve visualized about a hundred times. And it’s a scenario I’ve had the chance to practice over and over and over. And I’m about 0 for 1000. Not good odds.

In my constructed environment, I’m the confident strutting international woman of mystery, clothed in a long coat and moving quickly but gracefully through the cheaply carpeted terminals, travel bag resting perfectly on my forearm. I move through the security line at lightning pace, pulling my shoes off and my laptop out in one fluid movement. And I arrive at the gate just in time to board, cup of coffee in manicured hand, only to relax into my seat and smile at the other more nervous passengers as they scramble for coveted overhead storage.

Ignoring the fact that I rarely have a manicured hands or an appropriate travel bag, I’m usually running too late for this to work (I know, shocking). Because I never fail to dangerously underestimate the amount of time it will take me to check-in, get through security, and find a decent cup of coffee (35 minutes, right?), I’m required to awkwardly sprint from the moment I step inside the automatic glass doors, risking dismemberment (or at least shoulder dislocation) by my rolling suitcase that is a little too heavy due to my frantic inefficient packing.

Security is never the breeze I expect, and instead of serenely gliding through the line, I end up standing 3 inches from the person in front of me, neck veins bulging, in hopes that my intensity will magically move people through the checkpoint in a timelier manner (it should be noted that this does not work). Savvy travelers have a system: they get their laptops out and ready, their coats off, and their shoelaces untied BEFORE they reach the little conveyor belt, and this allows them to shave several seconds off the whole ordeal. The rest of the pack has no such system, and I find myself sighing loudly as the family of five unpacks their electronic devices, contends with shoes, breaks down the stroller, inevitably loses and then finds something, and tries to herd the kids through the metal detector. Without fail, one of the kids sets off the alarm, and chaos ensues as the parents try to figure out what the cause is. Meanwhile, I’m having an aneurism, offering unhelpful advice, like hiring a babysitter next time, standing in my socked feet and worrying I’m going to miss my flight.

On a related note, airports these days are creating separate lines for travelers of varied experiences. There’s the family line, the casual traveler line, and the expert traveler line. Of course, I always choose the expert line, because I’m good at everything. This is a trick and always a bad call. This is because everyone thinks they’re good at traveling and chooses the expert travel line to feed their own ego. The TSA doesn’t think about this, however, so they make more casual traveler lines. So I get to have a heart attack because some dude just breezed through the casual traveler line while I’m waiting on the family of four shoving the car seat through the conveyer belt in the one line reserved for expert travelers. It’s times like those when I wish the TSA would relegate more people to crowd control and less to telling me that contact solution comes in travel size bottles that would prevent them from having to test mine every time I go through security. Really? I’ve been wearing contacts since 8^th grade. You mean I’ve never realized there’s another bottle size?

Once I do make it through the TSA process, the next order of business is coffee. I cannot fly without coffee. I do my best work on planes, and this is completely contingent upon me being caffeinated.

In any circumstance, caffeine is a magical magical drug that makes me ambitious, motivated, and focused. When I’m caffeinated, I can do anything. I have the energy to run a marathon, the optimism to commit to lofty goals, and the articulation to craft great pieces of writing. I can save the planet on caffeine. I can run for office. I can compassionately wax poetic about my fellow man. There is one danger of caffeine, though (uh, besides the whole explosive stomach thing): wasting its potential. Sometimes I get sucked into diversions when I’m caffeinated, and then I end up spending high-potential hour upon high-potential hour being the best facebooker ever, only to realize that I could have been doing something good for humanity with all of those wasted minutes.

Which brings us to why caffeine is essential for plane rides: with no other distractions on an airplane, I have a perfect environment in which to achieve. The amount of work I can pump out in a coffee-enhanced trip is truly stunning. So no matter how late I’m running, finding that black nectar is paramount.

Usually, this means sprinting bowleggedly, trying not to run myself over with my carry-on, to the side of the terminal I know houses a Starbucks or a Caribou Coffee or some other chain of mediocrity that I at least know will be drinkable. Upon obtaining my scalding hot cup of joe, I have to run back, risking second degree burns, so I can be first on the plane and get my choice of overhead storage space. In my nervousness over whether I’m going to be able to achieve that end, I down the coffee as fast as I can, burning the roof of my mouth and ensuring I’m going to be counting the seconds until the seatbelt sign goes off so I can relieve myself in the bathroom.

So we’re pretty much up-to-date on how I got here, sweating and nauseous. Standard operating procedure.  Baffling.