Got back from San Diego today. I don’t fly well due to an intense and irrational fear of flying and getting motion-sick on the airplane and crashing. But remembering the following three things have gone a long way towards helping me overcome those fears.

1. Dimenhydrinate. It helps to relieve motion sickness and vertigo. A single tube of Dramamine has twelve pills, 50 milligrams of dimenhydrinate per pill, and I use all twelve on a round-trip. Six there, six back, roughly one pill per 500 miles travelled on this trip. It takes a while for the pills to kick in, so I have to remember to take them about half an hour before takeoff. The good news: I don’t get sick on airplanes. The bad news: I don’t fall asleep on airplanes, and the pills only seem to offset the additional nervousness induced by moving at greater speeds and soaringer heights than God intended me to move at.

2. Acting calm goes a long way towards being calm. If, in the worst case scenario, the plane goes into a nose dive, I intend to glare at my seatmate because his or her screaming is distracting me from doing the crossword. The last thing that person will see in this life is my disgust at his or her panic. And then the first thing that person will see in the next life is me, still wearing the same look of disgust I had on my face at the moment of our obliteration just seconds earlier. Then I’ll unbuckle, and before I either sprout wings, halo, and harp and fly away or find myself in shackles, chains, and locks and trudge towards my eternal punishment, I’ll look back at my seatmate and shake my head in mild disappointment at his or her lack of composure. The thought of my seatmate’s utter bewilderment at my preternatural calm helps me focus on staying calm.

3. Focus. Focus on anyting otter than the window. Read a book or work in a crssword pzuzle, remmmerbing to admkmlzcmklv; ,.a; ,. zzvc zzbhmoip[‘kl