Category Archives: Preparing to cruise

Life’s Little Challenges: A Personal Tale

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We’ve been writing this blog now for over 4 years and it’s been a lot of fun for me to record this life transition. Looking back at our earlier posts I am sometimes stunned at all the progress we’ve made in these years and at how much the blog has helped keep us on track.  What started out on October 8, 2011 as a way for me to keep a kind of on-line diary turns out to be something I actually like doing. Except, at times,  for the coming up with ideas part.

Love this photo of Galapagos out on Commencement Bay last April. Photo taken by the good people of S/V Elsa.

Love this photo of Galapagos out on Commencement Bay last April. Photo taken by the good people of S/V Elsa.

Especially when there is nothing cool going on down at Galapagos, I can hit considerable dry spells where life just doesn’t seem interesting enough to write about. If you write, you know what I mean. Real life is just filled with all kinds of what I call ‘beige’; things that are really the neutral backbone of living and bring everything together, and yet they don’t actually get noticed. Most of life is lived in the ‘beige’, and yet we write mostly about the ‘red’ moments, the moments that make everything else go ‘pop!’. (Photos from our cruise last year because how else would I illustrated this post? These are photos of the ‘beige’ parts of cruising.No drama. Just living.)

How we dry our socks aboard Galapagos. Yes, we are careful.

To keep the writing mojo going you kind of have to get ‘creative’ and you need to have a serious supply of ‘butt glue’, a term first revealed to us by a successful published author, years ago. She said this was her secret. You have to glue your butt in the chair, put your fingers on the keys, and compel them to move.  I remember that term every time I sit down in front of the computer and wait for inspiration to hit. It’s a little bit of what I’ve termed ‘Nike Therapy’. You “Just Do It”.

Lately I’ve made space in my life by cutting certain things out of it. I’ve written extensively about all the junk we’ve given away to other junk collectors and to charities. I’ve released my contracts with insurance companies and commercial office spaces in my work and chosen to work as a Life Coach rather than a Psychotherapist, freeing up much needed psychological space and energizing my practice. But nature abhors a vacuum and now I have internal space to fill. It’s like clearing out a room in your home. What will you do with it now that it’s empty? The possibilities are endless.  I’ve decided I need a little more of a challenge for myself in terms of writing. I need to up the ante a bit, and have a little more pressure to bring the blog up a notch. Well, actually, it’s more about bringing my own development up a notch, but if the blog benefits, that’s all to the good.

Getting creative in the forward berth. This will be the ‘rumpus’ room and the guest room.

I religiously read The Cynical Sailor & His Salty Sidekick and also SVCambria.com.  Both these bloggers do what’s called Blog Challenges. The idea is that some alpha-blogger out there in cyberblogland gets a God complex, or maybe they just are gluttons for punishment. Said blogger then sets up some kind of rules about what you blog about, then they hit ‘go’ and a bunch of bloggers sign up to follow their rules and begin writing their little hearts out. Must be a powerful feeling! I mean, you should see the list of blogs from people who want to get on board with being challenged by rules! There are more blogs on that list than there were people in any of my graduating classes. (Note: Little Cunning Plan is number 970 on the list.)  But I have been intrigued. Am I a blogger? Can I be challenged? Do I want to do this? Am I commitment phobic? The answer to all of these questions is yes. I am, I can, I do, but I am.

Ah, commitment. That last one is the biggest hurdle for me.  When Ellen, over at Cynical Sailor, announced she was doing yet another blog challenge, the A to Z Challenge, that little voice that compels me to obey started yammering in my head. “You must do this. This would be great for you. You have plenty of time to devote to this. Just look at all the empty space in your psyche! This is the time. Just do it. Stop procrastinating you lazy female. I don’t want to hear excuses.”  Really, this voice is like every gym teacher I ever had in any school anywhere.  Apparently I needed to get my butt glue out and just do it. Yes, it would mean committing out loud to something that would take time. Yes, Mike and I are traveling to Washington D.C. in early April, the very month of the challenge. Hmmm.

Breakfast. I made these crustless spinach quiches and froze them. No muss. No fuss. Plenty of protein.

Of course, I didn’t go down without a fight. I’m much too willful to simply obey without questioning. I mean, I have never even played a team sport!  And there are many good reasons for that. We should all be grateful I passed those up. I argued and used logic. I put my hands firmly on my hips. I stomped around a lot. I threw that voice more insults than a Republican at a ‘debate-ish’ type of event. But it was like my own arguments didn’t even register on the voice’s little radar. It’s like this voice thought I had nothing better to do. Sure, I actually don’t have anything better to do right now.  But still, I was a whiner and didn’t give in. Until Ellen said Stephanie over at SV Cambria was going to do it, too. Well, crap then. The gauntlet was thrown down. Okay, fine. I’ll do it.

And now I’m excited to get started. Sometimes commitment to is like that. You resist for no good reason except sheer laziness and the feeling of power of getting in your own way, then once the promise is made, it’s all good and that yammering voice simmers down for awhile. So get ready for daily (except Sundays, a day of rest as the good Lord intended) blog posts in the month of April. I’m already writing them in my head and guess what else? There is a theme! The theme will be revealed on March 21, because I’m trying to follow the damn rules, okay?  Should be a fun month.

Enjoying the aft deck after we removed the huge bulk that was the old life raft. Clearing space is good.

 

Short Timers: A Play in One Act

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Mike and Melissa realize their Little Cunning Plan will be coming to fruition in the next year.

From our 2014 Vacation in the Gulf Islands

The setting: A 1968 rambler somewhere in western Washington.  It’s a Thursday evening and Melissa has just gotten off the phone with a friend who has a cool little twin keel sailboat. It has been an uplifting and fun conversation of trading resources and talking boats. Mike is sitting on a couch, reading the paper, having overheard the conversation.

Melissa: (Hanging up) Wow! That was really helpful and nice. I want to take Galapagos down to south sound this year for a long weekend and say howdy to Gary and Rose, and see Mud Duck.

Mike: Yeah. I’d love to do a long weekend and go down there. (He is wistful with a faraway look in those eyes.)

Melissa: You know I’ve been telling people you have one more year to work and then we go. To hell with everything; we go. The house will work out one way or another, the dog will work out somehow, we leave our jobs, we get hauled out and do some final preparations on Galapagos, then we just get the hell out of here. I’ve been saying this out loud to people lately.

Penelekut Isand, 2014

Mike: (visibly brightening, nodding yes): Yeah! Say it!  That’s right! We need to begin saying this. One more year. (pauses as if reflecting)  If we leave early enough in the season we could explore the inside passage, up into BC before we head south. That would be great.

Melissa: Yeah, we could do that circumnavigation of Vancouver Island we’d like to do, a shake down of sorts, and not have to hurry up. Maybe even see Princess Louisa inlet.   (She is looking through Facebook as she talks)

Mike: Yeah! Then if all goes well, we just keep heading south!!

Melissa: Yes! Hey, LLBean is having a sale. (She clicks through to Bean’s and begins scrolling through the sale pages.)   Do you want to see if they have anything you need?

Mike: Nah. I’m not interested in buying clothes right now. Hey, know what I want to do? How about when we head south we stop for awhile and explore the Columbia River? Do you want to do that?

Melissa: (Clicking on things) I don’t know. It sounds OK, but I’d really like to get further away. How about that river delta in Northern California? We could explore that? But really I’d like warmer weather sooner rather than later. Hey, they have bathing suits on sale and those sun shirts that have 50 SPF. I do want to get a couple of those while they are on sale. All I really want to buy is swim suits and things. It feels like magic. If I buy the suit, the warm weather will come. You think?

Portland Island, a favorite place.

Mike: (laughs) I guess we’ll probably stop in San Francisco, because it’s kind of an iconic thing to do.

Melissa: (shrugging, because she, at this point, doesn’t give a rip about iconic anything, much less San Francisco) Yeah, well you know what? By the time we leave I’m not really going to give a crap where we go. You want to explore the Columbia? Fine. I’m probably going to say yes to that just because guess what? We WON’T HAVE A TIME SCHEDULE THE WAY WE DO NOW! So hey, if we spend another year exploring up here, part of me says ‘what the heck, why not?’. But then those swimsuits, they will sit in a drawer for an entire year. Hmm. We shall see. (Another winter in the Pacific Northwest? She hopes not)  I guess it will depend on the Pacific weather. We’ll let the weather decide.

Mike: I’m thinking being close to the coast should be ok. Then we could stop some places. I have a friend in Monterey Bay I’d like to see.

Melissa: Okay. (Thinking that’s fine but she’d really like to just get out of sight of land and just do a longer passage off shore, and also she thinks the coastal weather could be worse, but who cares right now?) I’m ordering two of the sun shirts. I can wear them this summer up here, at least.

Just saying “No” to a marina at Sidney, B.C.

(Lights fade as they close up their laptops and toddle off to bed, full of wonder at the passage of time and how much there is to do between now and a year from now, their budding sense of excitement and anticipation buoying them with energy for the next push.)

Not an auspicious name for a boat, I guess.

Not an auspicious name for a boat, I guess.

 

 

 

‘Waiting’ is an Action Verb

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I’ve been hanging around our house a lot lately. On the days I don’t work,  I just kind of drift from room to room, looking for something that needs doing right now. I’ll bet this is a little like what a surfer feels like, floating in the water waiting for the next set of waves. Except they are having more fun. There is too much ‘waiting’ going on around here, and I’m right in the middle of that.

Perhaps you haven’t really thought much about this, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, but ‘waiting’ is actually an action verb. Remember third grade? There are two kinds of verbs: action and being. And in spite of how passive ‘waiting’ sounds, get real. Sure, there is plenty of sitting around associated with ‘waiting’, but if you’ve ever ‘waited’, you know that there is a lot of activity associated with it. There is foot tapping, pacing, random speed thinking, fear-based storylines running their loop in your head, planning strategies to deal with those fear-based narratives in your head, hand-wringing, and generally the driving of yourself crazy.

The inner narrative goes something like this:

“When will people come and rent our house? What if no one wants to rent it? When will we move onto the boat? How come no one has contacted us yet? Is this going to work? Maybe we should sell, but I’m not ready to sell. But this house is a lot of work, and a lot of money. Maybe we should sell. But it’s our family home. Damn we could be saving so much money if we didn’t have this house. Galapagos still needs a lot of work. We still will spend a shit ton of money getting her ready to go. Damn it! (I use a lot of ‘language’ in my head. It relieves stress.) What is plan B? Maybe we could do a long term rental. No, the rental market in Lakewood is flooded. We can’t cover our costs with a long term rental. I wonder how long it will take before we know if this plan is the right one? Thank goodness we haven’t wasted our efforts getting the house ready because we’d have to get it ready to sell anyhow. Is that our Plan B?  Damn, I hate these kinds of decisions. ”

Do you see what I mean? 

I am not a good ‘waiter’. Good ‘waiters’ are like the roots of these Hellebores. They lay quietly during the dark of winter, softly preparing to burst forth in vibrant color when their time is right. They grow bigger, deeper, and stronger, preparing for the day when their many stalks will shoot up toward the sun, cheerful faces aglow with glorious spring color. They are completely ‘at one’ with their mission in life.

I try to be all ‘Zen’ about it, and I do have moments of that simple peacefulness that happens when you actually succeed in focusing on the here and now, just breathing deeply into the present moment, knowing that you, too, will bloom with the timing of the God.  (See how soothing those words are? Kind of hypnotic.) But I’m not the Buddha. Not even close, even if I do know how to do deep breathing and can actually teach others to do it. Big deal.  No, most of the Zen moments I have are really just because I made my inner voices shut the hell up for just a few minutes. 

So right now the house is filled with this action-based ‘waiting’ to see if our plan A is going to work. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. But I sure would like to know so I can move on to Plan B if I need to. There is no way to hurry this. And I should just accept that by finding my inner Buddha. I’m a work in progress. What can I say?

Soon, we’ll be riding another wave of real activity as Claire and Dan return to Scotland tomorrow, after some weeks with us. We’ll do the final ‘moving stuff out of the house’, as though we actually have people waiting to move into it. At least we will be ready then, and it’s stuff we eventually have to deal with anyway. It will feel good to have something to do that makes me feel like there is forward momentum, even though we will miss them. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s packing boxes. hellebore

In the end, when I step back from the waiting, I realize it’s all good. We are housed, and fed, and healthy and happy. The rest is just cake. File this post under ‘here are all the thoughts and feels you will have if you, too, make this huge life change when you are in your mid-50’s. ‘   Maybe you might want to consider doing it sooner.

Meanwhile, here are your yearly Helleborus photos and some snowdrops. They look really nice this year.