I read Kin Lane's short post about the going-not-going dance on a weeknight when I had my own trip on the calendar, and I kept nodding along like he had been sitting in my kitchen.
He describes it plainly. The night before he flies to London to speak, his brain says "I don't want to go." Then it reminds him there is an audience waiting, and people who think he is smart, and he wants to go. An hour later: "I don't want to go." Repeat until he goes.
What caught me was not the dance itself. Most of us who travel for work know it. It was how he holds it. He doesn't treat it as a problem to solve or a weakness to hide. He treats it, in his words, like you would children: you can't indulge these feelings, but you can't ignore them either. That line stayed with me for days.
He traces the dance back to a small-town kid who drove everywhere and never really wanted to leave home, and to old fears of flying and the imposter syndrome that comes with standing in front of a room. Then he admits the grown-up version is the same thing in a new city. He doesn't want to leave New York because he is comfortable. I read that and thought about my own routines, the coffee, the same walk every morning, and how loudly they argue every time a suitcase comes out of the closet.
There is no dramatic turn in the piece. He goes. Of course he goes. Travel keeps his career going, he loves speaking, he loves the London Underground the way some people love old bookstores. What makes it worth reading is the honesty about the middle part, the back-and-forth that nobody posts about. We see the conference photo. We don't see the person standing in the hallway the night before, half packed, negotiating with themselves.
He also says what would quiet the dance: having Audrey and Poppy along. That small sentence does a lot of work. The resistance isn't really about airports or audiences. It is about leaving the people and the life you have built, even for a few days, even for something good.
He ends by calling his life fascinating, strange and wonderful, and saying he feels lucky to have all of it, dances included. I closed the tab and finished packing. I still didn't want to go. I went anyway, and I noticed the dance a little more kindly this time, as something that comes with the trip rather than something standing in its way.
Read the original: https://kinlane.com/2026/09/27/the-going-not-going-to-london-dance-in-my-head/