Shutdown Checklist
☕ Sunday Briefing – Issue #053
No checklist today — just something I’ve been sitting with.
Every flight ends with one.
The parking brake is set. The engines spool down. Switches move into their proper positions one by one until the cockpit finally goes quiet. Nobody rushes through it because everyone understands the same thing: just because the airplane has stopped moving doesn’t mean the flight is over. The shutdown matters.
Some evenings I pull into the driveway and sit in the car for an extra fifteen seconds. The engine is off, but it still makes those little clicking sounds as it cools. My bag is sitting on the passenger seat where I dropped it that morning, and through the windshield I can see the porch light spilling across the driveway. Every now and then a shadow races past the front window, too fast to make out but familiar enough that I know exactly who it belongs to.
I’ve made the walk from the car to the front door thousands of times without thinking about it, but lately it’s become one of the most important parts of my day. Somewhere between shifting into park and reaching for the handle, I have a choice to make. I can carry the day inside with me, or I can leave it where it belongs.
For a long time, I didn’t realize there was a difference.
Some days begin before sunrise and don’t really end when the car rolls to a stop. Fatigue lingers. Conversations replay themselves. Little frustrations hitch a ride home, and before today has even finished, part of my mind is already worrying about tomorrow. My body has arrived in the driveway, but the rest of me is still somewhere else.
The little boy waiting inside doesn’t know any of that. He doesn’t know what time the alarm went off or what kind of day I had. He isn’t thinking about schedules, weather, delays, or the thousand little decisions that fill a day. He just heard the garage door, and somewhere in the next few seconds he’s going to come sprinting around the corner holding a dinosaur or a monster truck, desperate to show me something that feels like the biggest event in the world.
I’ve missed those moments before, not because I wasn’t standing there but because only part of me had actually made it home. The rest was still replaying a conversation, solving a problem that could wait until tomorrow, or carrying around stress that nobody inside the house had anything to do with. I’d nod without listening, answer without seeing, and let impatience leak into moments that deserved curiosity instead.
The older I get, the more backwards that feels. I can smile at a stranger after a long day, laugh with someone I’ll never see again, and offer patience to people who will forget my name by tomorrow morning. Then I walk through my own front door and somehow convince myself that the people I love most should understand why they’re getting whatever version of me is left.
Home shouldn’t be where my family gets the leftovers. It should be the one place that gets my full attention because it’s the only place where I’m completely irreplaceable. Someone else can fly the trip tomorrow. Someone else can solve tomorrow’s problem. Someone else can answer the phone. Nobody else gets to be my kids’ dad, and nobody else gets to be my wife’s husband.
The strange thing is that aviation has a checklist for almost everything. We have procedures for emergencies, callouts for routine operations, and memory items for the moments that matter most. We practice them until they become instinct because we know pressure has a way of making people forget what’s important.
Life doesn’t hand us one when we pull into the driveway.
There isn’t a switch labeled WORK COMPLETE. No checklist reminding us to leave today’s frustrations in the car before we walk through the front door. The people waiting inside don’t need the version of us the world has been wearing down all day.
Lately, before I grab my flight bag, I’ve started taking one slow breath. It’s nothing dramatic. Just a quiet reminder that whatever happened today can stay in the driver’s seat for another twelve hours. The trip is over. The weather is behind me. Tomorrow will still be waiting when I leave again.
Inside that front door is a little boy who’s been waiting to show me his newest monster truck, a little girl who doesn’t care how many legs I flew, and a wife who deserves more than whatever energy I have left over.
Every airplane has a shutdown checklist.
Mine just starts in the driveway.
Until the next leg,
Jake
First Officer, Dad, Human Trying Not to Stall