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As the decade ended, I sat at 30,000 feet in a flying metal tube watching a movie. Not sure exactly what movie I was watching at the exact point that the decade ended over the Pacific ocean; during the flight I basically just watched movies back to back so I’m very confident that when the decade changed this is what I was doing.

I attempted, during some ads preceding one of the movies, to calculate at what point I would fly over midnight. However, this was probably 6 hours in and my brain had already been zombified by recirculated air and simple plotted films. Ultimately, I decided it didn’t matter and went back to zoning out while watching Brad Pitt cruise around Hollywood in DiCaprio’s car in a boring but pretty Tarantino film.

I have realized that my instinct on any flight is to essentially turn my brain off to allow the time to fly by without acknowledgement. I think this allows long trips to feel shorter than they are. If I am not consciously registering the passage of time, all those moments blur together and become condensed in my mind. This is why I zoned out to movies instead of listening to my book on tape or reading. To me this feels a bit like a time warp; condensing the passage through time to make more seem like less. It’s kind of fun to look back on and think about how my mind perceived everything.

Ultimately, my 16 hours of flying to Singapore felt like about 8 and my 2 hour flight to Bangkok felt like 30 mins. However, once I got on the train to the city from the airport, time stretched and 30 minutes felt like an hour. By the end of traveling, I had been awake for about 30 hours and fell asleep almost instantly despite the uncomfortable firmness of my hostel bed. I’m excited that this journey has finally began for real.