“I love to travel. I just hate the travel part.” — old axiom

Why is boarding a plane so unpleasant? It’s unnecessarily stressful, for me at least, riddled with confusing queuing rules, mumbly loudspeaker instructions that sound like the adults in Charlie Brown specials, brazen line-cutters, and the overall sense of sweaty barnyard herding.

My biggest stress point is the overhead bins and making sure I find a space for my small carry-on roller that’s not in row 57 when I’m in row 22. So now, on United, I pay a $24 fee for “priority boarding” largely to avoid overhead bin combat. (Though passenger jostling is an amazing spectacle.) Even then it can be a hassle to locate an empty bin that some moron hasn’t stuffed with jackets and backpacks that belong under the seat.

I’ve never tussled with a fellow passenger for bin space, but once while struggling I murmured “shit” under my breath and a flight attendant heard me (what is he, a cocker spaniel?) and said aloud, “Oh, we’ve got a live one here,” which of course only pissed me off more.

Paying for priority boarding is worth it. It places you in line 2, just behind the first-class bigwigs, meaning you board in the second group instead of the saps in 3 through 5, who shed bitter tears as they futilely seek space in the already packed overhead bins while you coolly, regally read your book, your carry-on stowed directly above you, snug and smug.

But that, of course, is only the beginning of the journey. The rest is its own kind of nightmarish diabolical shitty hell. The cramped, crowded quarters. Seat backs that bonk you on the forehead. Mealy meals — chicken or pasta, always. Drenched, toilet paper-strewn lavatories (their term, not mine). Butts constantly bumping you in the aisle seat as people scrunch by. Chiclet-size pillows made of gauze. And so forth in the untold litany of awful air travel platitudes.

The tradeoff for this misery is why you do it. Flights will wreck you with stress and redeye fatigue. They are, frankly, a pain in the ass. My post-flight recovery time is cosmic. But then I rebound, ready for days of stuff in a new city, until it’s time for the dreaded return flight. I steel myself for this phenomenon.

The going-back blues are knee-buckling, a gut punch of leaving a place at which you seemingly just arrived. Oh, the banality of home! The only remedy is to begin mapping your next trip, including — and this is critical, really, listen — strategizing how to snag the perfect overhead bin, a forward-thinking start to any vacation.