I Wasn’t Destined To Be

Sweat The Small Stuff. Without Letting Anyone See You Sweat.

It's Like Being A Newborn, This Sudden Sensory Overload Of Noise, Color, Smells And Gravity After Months Of Quietly Floating, Encased In Relative Calm And Isolation. No Wonder Babies Cry In Protest When They're Born.

My Optimism And Confidence Come Not From Feeling I'm Luckier Than Other Mortals, And They Sure Don't Come From Visualizing Victory. They're The Result Of A Lifetime Spent Visualizing Defeat And Figuring Out How To Prevent It. Like Most Astronauts, I'm Pretty Sure That I Can Deal With What Life Throws At Me Because I've Thought About What To Do If Things Go Wrong, As Well As Right. That's The Power Of Negative Thinking.

The Nile, Draining Out Into The Mediterranean. The Bright Lights Of Cairo Announce The Opening Of The North-flowing River’s Delta, With Jerusalem’s Answering High Beams To The Northeast. This 4,258 Mile Braid Of Human Life, First Navigated End-to-end In 2004, Is Visible In A Single Glance From Space.

Other Anatomical Changes Associated With Long-duration Space Flight Are Definitely Negative: The Immune System Weakens, The Heart Shrinks Because It Doesn't Have To Strain Against Gravity, Eyesight Tends To Degrade, Sometimes Markedly (no One's Exactly Sure Why Yet). The Spine Lengthens As The Little Sacs Of Fluid Between The Vertebrae Expand, And Bone Mass Decreases As The Body Sheds Calcium. Without Gravity, We Don't Need Muscle And Bone Mass To Support Our Own Weight, Which Is What Makes Life In Space So Much Fun But Also So Inherently Bad For The Human Body, Long-term.