I decided I had to take my camera out of its box and test it before I took it across the ocean, make sure I could get pictures off of it and onto my computer. Out in the back yard I took a shot of a bird (isn't that what photographers do?) and then down by the river I took a shot of some white clouds (which seemed appropriate). Yeah, I think it'll do.
"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than those you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the wind in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." — H. Jackson Brown Junior's mother
26 September 2012
Testing the lipstick camera
I decided I had to take my camera out of its box and test it before I took it across the ocean, make sure I could get pictures off of it and onto my computer. Out in the back yard I took a shot of a bird (isn't that what photographers do?) and then down by the river I took a shot of some white clouds (which seemed appropriate). Yeah, I think it'll do.
good bye trees
I live
in a small house in a small town with a small back yard. When they were first
built sixty years ago all the houses on our street were identical and now, despite the
various additions many have, they are still not special at all. Stretching out behind
our lot and those of our neighbours, however, is a patch of undeveloped forest,
perhaps 200 m in each direction, full of mature red and white pines. My bedroom
faces the back, so this, which I call the ‘back woods’ as if we lived on a farm
or something, is what I see each morning when I first wake up.
It is marvelous.
For
many years when I was under-employed and my marriage was on the rocks and my
best friend had moved 3000 miles away my kids were seemingly stuck permanently
in the neediest stages of childhood, lying in bed for five minutes in the
morning and looking out the window at the countless soaring red pine tree
trunks, the lush feathery branches of the white pines, and the glimpses of sky
beyond, was a quasi-spiritual experience that gave me the inner peace I needed
to face the day. The red pines, having been reaching straight for the sky for
at least a century, are impossibly tall and skinny, as majestic and awe
inspiring as the pillars in any European cathedral, and the white pines, oh, I do not
speak English well enough to describe appropriately their grandeur.
It is
simply beautiful.
Today
is no exception. The sun is out, shining brilliantly, giving the needle covered
branches a peculiar yellow green colour and the tall trunks a camouflage of
light and dark that almost obscures them. The small patches of sky that are
visible behind are blue blue blue. It will be another perfect day here in
paradise. In July it tends to be too hot during the afternoon but by this time
of year there are many hints that fall is already on its way and it is
beautiful outside 24/7. I listen to the incessant squawking of a flock of
grackles that have descended nearby and the annoyed chattering response of a
squirrel. In the distance a couple crows can be heard conversing back and
forth.
I love
it.
I
remember the first time I walked into this room; seeing nothing but trees
through the window gave the feeling of being separate, away, as if in an
isolated cottage on a lake far from anywhere, and, to this day, the view
creates an illusion that I am somewhere, somewhere else.
For years if I
was unhappy I often lay here looking out at the trees and it was as if I were
alone in the universe. I could forget for a few minutes that I was here, in
this house, in this town, in this life. The trees, so sure of their purpose,
apparently unperturbed by the town that had sprung up around them, emanated a
patience and peacefulness that inspired in me a calmness and encouraged me to
emulate their stoic nature. I could lie here and gaze with wonder at the beauty
of nature sure in the knowledge that if I were a photographer I could take a
hundred pictures from here, each different yet beautiful, and fill a whole
coffee table book with them.
A
gentle breeze starts to whisper and the fluttering of some poplar leaves
catches my attention and brings me back to the present. Why am I going exactly?
Why am I leaving behind these lovely trees of mine? In past the trees have always
represented an escape of sorts, a secret and unspoken whisper of desire for
separation from the here and now, but today they are just the opposite, they
are the continuity of everything that is safe and secure and familiar about my
life. Today if I listen hard enough I can hear, in the oh so very soft movements
of the branches, a personal reassurance from them that they will still be here
when I return.
I am
not a photographer. I never have been. I bought a camera to take on my trip,
the first one I have ever bought (is that possible, did I bring up three kids
without ever having bought a camera? I guess I did. Weird.) but it is still in
the box. (And it is not a ‘real’ camera, it is, as the salesman pointed out, red,
which apparently says everything, effectively equates it to lipstick.) I don’t
want to open it. I fear I will only be disappointed by the difference, the vast
difference, between what I can see with my eyes - and my heart - and what I can
get the camera to capture. How could I possibly take a picture that shows that
the trees and I converse with each other, even if my camera were black? (I like the fact that my camera is just a toy, it
gives me an excuse, already, for not succeeding in taking the photos I would want to. I plan
to practise with it for now and buy myself a proper one, for
my next significant birthday, make a more serious effort then. I believe in baby steps.) I consider going to get my camera and trying to
take a photo with it but instead snap a shot with my phone. I make a note to
self – find a photo course to take when you get home.
The
purpose of this trip is not to look outwards and produce a fantastic photo
essay, it is much more to look inwards and find a more permanent peace, to become, if you will, more like my trees themselves. If, however, I am successful on this trip, then,
maybe, on the next one, I will set out with that very different goal. But I am
getting ahead of myself.
Bye
trees. I will miss you.
19 September 2012
Longing to meet The Boat
I decided to go sailing,
to crew on someone else’s boat, to take a trip both free and freeing, so I went
online and found a website for crew and boats and chose a boat and
sent out a wave.
Suddenly I was down in the city meeting HS, the captain of my
chosen boat. Our plan was to do lunch and then go for a walk. Could it really
be this easy?
Apparently so.
It was an amazing day in very much
the way that first dates are amazing, you know, the sun shining and the birds singing in the trees... I had just arrived at the agreed upon
meeting spot when he swooped by in his BMW convertible and waved at me. (How
did he recognize me?) (He is quite overweight.) (Wow, what a car.) Jump in he
said and we will look for a parking spot. Finding a spot was not an easy task
downtown at lunchtime but find one we did, and then, before I knew it, we were
meandering up the street talking as we went, chatting easily about all manner
of things, laughing companionably. We arrived effortlessly in a courtyard that
held several little European-looking restaurants with patio furniture and large
umbrellas and a few trees scattered about and picked a table in dappled
sunlight. The waitress brought us menus and water and later came back to take our
order but we had been too busy talking to each other. I told him of my limited
sailing experiences and he was genuinely interested in where I had been and of
the boats. He told me of storms he had been in and disasters his friends had
met at sea. (There is a space between two of his teeth and his hair is too long
but he is not as old as I had feared he would be.) I ask about his upcoming
itinerary and am slightly disappointed to learn that he would be at sea over
Christmas. (It had not occurred to me that I would not be home to spend
Christmas with my kids. Could I even contemplate such a thing?) Our restaurant,
when we looked at the menus, turned out to be Italian, all pastas and pizzas
and such. I ordered a Mediterranean dish that arrived filled with artichoke and
eggplant and olives and goat cheese. It was heavenly. His tortellini was plain
and bland and not at all what he had been expecting. I hoped our respective
meals were not representative of our relative first impressions of each other.
We ate, we talked, an hour passed and we were late for his parking meter so we
paid the bill and rushed back to avoid a ticket.
Let’s go somewhere else, he said, to
walk and talk, and we got in his car and drove about the city looking for the
perfect place zooming out to the lake and then back towards the city and then
on to the small marina where he had first got on his boat with his wife. I am
not looking for a date, he said, my wife was the woman of my dreams, has been
dead several years, but is still the woman of my dreams. I am married, I said, though on a break, my life plan is to sail for as long as I like and then go
home and put my marriage back together. I don’t even know if I will actually like to
sail, I add, I have been dreaming of it for so long I fear my expectations are more
myth than reality. We talk of our kids (we both have boys in their 20’s), of
how the river here is different from those in Europe, of parks we have visited,
of the pros and cons of books and kindles. He makes me laugh, I make him laugh,
the sun is shining and it is lovely out. (If it were a first date we would be
holding hands by now, stopping in the shady spots to hug each other.) And I am
suddenly so happy that it is not a first date. There is no stress, there will
be no romantic entanglement to mess things up, I would be, if he chose to take
me on, merely crew. It will be open, and safe, and easy. All I will have to do
is clean and cook and stand watch beneath the stars, marvelling at the dolphins
and the flying fish, drinking in the beauty of the sunrise, and looking forward
to a glass of wine at the next port. I will be crew, just crew, and I will be SO
happy in that role.
He told me that he was a bit gun shy,
had had three disastrous crew in a row, one who was a vegetarian and one who
wanted to wear make-up and one who just didn’t have any opinions on anything. I
think, I told him, I might fit into that last category, might just not know
enough. And it is a real fear, that I am simply too ignorant to converse
intelligently about anything. I don’t know if I could do it. I worry I might
not be suitable companionship. He can sail by himself. What good am I to him?
As he drops me off I tell him that I
have already found someone to housesit my house, that I am going to go sailing
in the fall, that he is my first choice but that if he doesn’t choose me I will
go with someone else. I want him to know I am serious about setting off. He tells me he will let me know in
a couple of days his decision. I am in awe. I will await his answer.
Later, driving home with my son, I tell him everything, how wonderful the day was, how fantastic the man was. I was
afraid he was going to be too old, I say, but instead he was too rich, too
famous, too intelligent, too successful… way out of my league. So if you were
to look for a different more compatible captain it would be someone poorer and
less intelligent, my son queries, now how stupid is that.
(HS is way out of my league. But
maybe that doesn’t matter.)
Before I hear from him I am all in a
tizzy. What if he says yes? Could I go? Would I be able to do it? What about
the fact that I am so very ignorant? Would I rise to the challenge? What if he
says no? Well, that’s easy, actually, I look for another boat with a younger
captain and a more congenial itinerary. But what if he says yes? I walk round
and round town with Shelley and stop in and talk on and on to Catherine. What
if he says yes? Would I go? Could I? Dare I?
I don' t hove to wait long. He says yes. I say yes. It is done. YES!!
I fear for a few days that it is HS himself who captivated me. I am so caught up in the exoticness (to me) of the trip that I try to daydream about seducing him. But it just doesn’t ring true. And then I realize what has happened here. It didn't matter, really, what he was like. I wanted to go before I met him. I longed to go long before I met him, positively ached to in fact. (It's true, I did.) No, it is something different altogether; it is The Boat who has ensnared me. I am not going for the itinerary; weeks on end at sea and not even home for Christmas. I am not going for the captain; he seems a pretty nice guy if a bit full of himself. No, it is The Boat I am going for.
The Boat. Even her name sends shivers down my spine. How much more perfect could things get than that? I dream about her (she is, literally, the boat of my dreams). I dream about meeting her for the first time and leaning over and kissing her gently, opening my arms wide and giving her a hug, whispering softly to her that I will look after her if she looks after me. I dream about lying face down on her deck, my limbs spread, fingers splayed even, maximizing our skin contact. And these dreams do ring true.
She, she is the one who has been singing to my soul, like a whale who sings to her partner across miles of open water, she has sung to me from the other side of the ocean, from the other side of time almost, and I have heard her call, and soon, soon I will be going to her, drawn there like magic.
I can't wait. I can't wait to meet her, get introduced, learn about her quirks.
I am sometimes slow and I hope HS will take the time to let me get to know her properly, that he will introduce us gently, show me three times how to flush her head and start her stove. I want to learn everything about her, so that, God forbid, something happened to him, we, she and I, just the two of us on our own, would be able to take him to safety. I am worried about the huge imbalance that there will be to start with; he will know everything and I nothing. I am worried that I will not learn fast enough, not cook well enough, not have enough to talk to about with him, and that he will kick me off.
Yes, I am looking forward to getting to know him, HS, the captain, but, I think, smiling even now to myself, not as much as I am looking forward to getting to know her.
She is the one I want to talk to.
She is the one I want to open up too.
She is the one I want to share my soul with.
I can see us already, the boat and I, talking quietly together for hours, on one of those perfect night shifts when everyone else in the world is sound asleep and the two of us are alone together in the universe sailing serenely beneath the endless stars, the world spinning slowly beneath us. I can see us already, the boat and I, having choppy and clipped conversations, throwing panicky questions back and forth to each other, trying to get things right, on those days when the wind is strong but fluky and gusts keep catching us both unawares.
I have known of her for a long time but we were not able to meet. I heard a rumour that she was up for sale once, a decade ago, and I imagined buying her, but it was not to be. The various men in my life, Andre, slowly dying, and Geoff, slowly growing away, and my kids, even more slowing growing into men, all conspired as if to keep us apart. But Andre finally died (I am sorry dear man that this happened to you) and Geoff finally left (despite the fact I fought body and soul to keep him with me) and the kids finally grew up (as the seasons inexorably turned) and so now, the men in my life dealt with, I am free to go to her.
It is odd that there will be yet another man there, attached to us both. HS. It feels like it may be a love triangle. I hope he is not too jealous. And suddenly I realize that he loves her too, has loved her for years, has loved her passionately and deeply for the decade I have known and merely dreamed of her, and longer even than that. He met her when my kids were only babies and now they are men. He knows her, already, in ways I can only hope to. He has been inside her, not once, but a thousand times. He has lived with her, knows her intimately, and kept her with him through thick and thin. And I remember that I will just be crew, and before I have even met her I feel I don’t want to have to leave, and I realize it will be I who will likely be the jealous one.
And yet I know I want to go. If even only for a brief visit.
I do, I want to go.
(I hope I like it.)
18 September 2012
Empty Room
Posted in September but written three weeks ago toward the
end of August…
I wake up in the morning needing desperately to pee and roll
over to look out the window just a little too fast sensing my dreams
disappearing from my consciousness as I do so. The loss of them is so sudden
that is distinctly physical; I can almost see/hear them swooshing away never to
be recaptured again. I lie still for a few minutes but they are gone. Gone. Forever.
As dreams sometimes are. As my youngest son’s childhood soon will be.
Later this week he is going off to college. I will not see
him for six months.
He was cleaning out his room yesterday. He started by
organizing which clothes he was going to take with him to school and ended up
putting the rest into a variety of different piles; those to give to a younger
family friend, those to go to the local thrift shop, those to throw out, and,
having finished sorting his clothes, he started work on the stuff accumulated
on his shelves. He has been living in this room since he was 4, and, being a
bit of a pack rat, has many boxes of accumulated treasures. As I poked my head
in to check on him he was going through a box of saved paperwork; a once purple
but now faded ‘shoe’ made out of Bristol board and laced with yarn, a book of
words than end in ‘an’, a version of ‘The Princess and the Pea’ laboriously
hand written on primary paper, birthday cards made for him by his friends to
celebrate his turning six… some of these treasures were sorted into a to-keep
pile but many more, those whose significance was lost to time, were being tossed
into a large garbage bag. Next he looked at his collection of ribbons and
trophies collected through years of hockey and other sports. ‘No,’ I wanted to
say, ‘don’t throw any of it out, keep it all, forever’, but I didn’t say
anything because I knew what I really meant was, ‘No, don’t grow up, keep on
being a child, forever.’ He got the smallest bedroom just because he was the
youngest child but he still managed to fill it with personality. I see the full
garbage bags lined up outside his door, watch him crumpling and discarding a
once favourite poster of Jose Theodore, and know that when I walk into the room
next week it will be as impersonal as a hotel room. ‘Leave it all,’ I want to
ask, ‘I need a shrine to visit.’ But I know that would be silly. Instead I ask
if there is anything I can do to help and he says he’d like my input to sort
out the last few clothes and I almost trip over my feet in the rush to help him
I am so desperate to spend these last few minutes with him before he goes.
Seeing him organizing and discarding the accumulated effects
of so many years pulled at my heart strings in a way I hadn’t expected it to.
I have been looking forward to my children growing up and leaving home, I have
been a single parent for quarter of a century, I am ready to move on. And yet.
It was a good quarter of a century, I was, despite the hardship and loneliness
of being a single parent, thrilled to have kids, and happy to spend the years
nurturing them, which is why this final goodbye will be so bittersweet. I have
known for months that my youngest son would be leaving at the end of August but
nonetheless I find myself startled that it is actually happening. I suggest he
might like to stay an extra year and he does not realize I am only partially
joking. Yes, I will keep in contact with my kids, visit them and have them
visit me, I will, I hope, continue to listen to their troubles and triumphs,
act as a sounding board, perhaps even give them my two cents now and again. But
it will not be the same. I live in a small isolated town and it is unlikely
that they will ever boomerang back. They will be gone. For good. Oddly, it is
the little things I will miss as much as the big ones; for twenty five years I
have checked the fridge every morning to see how much milk there is, for twenty
five years I have been aware, at night, when my children go to sleep and when
they wake up, for twenty five years, just being there, in the same house as my
children, has been, in itself, a significant part of my self-definition. No
more.
When my first child left I hardly noticed him going, there
were still two at home and the noise and commotion carried on with almost equal
volume. When the second one left the occasional silences were almost deafening,
the house was often full of teenagers, as usual, but, sometimes, my youngest
would be elsewhere, and I almost didn’t know what to do with the unexpected
stretches of solitude. Now, now, now with the last child leaving – I cannot
imagine how different it will be. The phone, which rang almost incessantly for
decades with my children’s friends calling, will likely go into shock, the
front door, which has never been locked, and which is literally falling off its
hinges from overuse, will likely suffer withdrawl symptoms, even the vacuum
cleaner is likely to miss its so frequent passes. Me, I might simply disappear.
I loved being a parent of newborns, of babies, of toddlers,
of children, and of teens. I loved that clean-baby smell and the ever-so-soft
skin they had when they were very young and the way that merely rubbing your
nose on their belly resulted in endless laughter. I loved those days at the
beach when you would sit them in the sand near the water’s edge with a plastic
shovel in their hand and they would play for hours digging and splashing. I
loved trips to the playground, days when a walk around to yard sales with a
nickel each to spend would result in new toys and games that would keep them busy
for hours. I loved the years when I had a box of scrap wood on the back deck
and all the children in the neighbourhood accumulated to hammer and nail and
paint their ‘sculptures’. I loved canoeing and camping with the kids, downhill
and cross-country skiing, visiting friends and relatives, road trips across the
country, vacations to exotic destinations. I loved watching them grow - older,
taller, more independent. I loved it when they got jobs and saved up for new
computers, bought their own motor boats, joined the high school football team,
started to go off for long weekends alone with their friends. I loved it all,
even the teenage years when the front hall was full of dozens of pairs of shoes
and the basement a seething mass of hot bodies and pounding music or the
backyard the scene of beer-pong tournaments where laughter flowed freely till
the cops came by to shut it down…
I noticed, of course, the many firsts; the first time my
oldest walked downtown by himself, the first time my middle child rode his bike
around the block without training wheels, the first time the youngest drove by
himself into the city. But the lasts got lost somehow. When was the last time
one snuggled in my bed with me in the morning, or flung himself into my arms
for comfort, or sat on my lap for a story… Where did those go, those lasts? How
did I not notice them too?
Yes, I loved being a parent, and though I found the journey
with three children, always very different ages from each other, a significant
challenge, I have no regrets whatsoever about any of it. I calculated once that
I was responsible for over 27000 meals while the kids were growing up. Where
have those years gone? Did I enjoy them enough? Did I ever yearn for the day
when it would be over, when the youngest would be 18 and walking out the door,
when I would be, finally, free, of the responsibility? Did I? If so, shame on
me. Whether I did, or not, the end of my last child’s childhood is here, and,
like the boxes of souvenirs and mementos dumped into garbage bags as he was
cleaning out his room, those days when I was a mother with children at home will
soon be gone forever, impossible to recapture, to hold onto, to keep.
Still lying in bed contemplating both the past and the
future a small part of me regrets that I was not born 5000 years ago in a time
when children and grandchildren were almost certain to live forever alongside
you in the same cave or even 500 years ago when chances were they would farm
the land beside you but a larger part of me is glad to have been born now in
the day and age when this the whole world is our oyster - as least for those of
us fortunate enough to have the opportunity to travel – and so my dream is for
my kids to fly free, to see and do and experience, learn new things and meet
new people, climb mountains both real and imaginary, and then, of course,
to come home and tell me how wonderful it all is, how happy they are, and let
me bask in the stories of their successes. Looking out my window at the two
hundred year old pines standing implacably against the sky, I realize that my
dreams from last nights sleep might have fled my consciousness but my dreams
for the future are solid and secure. I know what I want; to keep in contact
with my sons, watch as their lives soar. It is every mother’s dream, perhaps,
to see one’s children thrive, likely has been so since the dawn of time, but
that does not in any way take away from it, if anything it simply validates it.
As I clamber slowly out of bed I realize that my children’s
childhoods might have come to an end, but their lives have not, and neither has
mine. A page has merely been turned. I smile as I pad past the small empty
bedroom on my way downstairs to the washroom. I can’t wait to see what happens
next.
17 September 2012
Empty Nest
Dancing naked on the beach, I am trying, perhaps just a little too hard, to embrace my new status in life. I am striving to picture myself full of joy and exuberance as I leap towards the future. Studiously ignoring the little voice inside me that points out that I am almost as alone in life as I am in this, my first ever blog-post self-portrait, I take a picture that shows, if nothing else, my determination to thrive.
Then I run full speed across the sand and dive right into the deep clear clean water of the river and swim out out out until my arms are aching and my lungs bursting. I turn over to float on my back and let the serenity of my surroundings slowly seep into my soul. I come to this place often, almost daily, it is a quick ten minute bike ride from where I live. Today the sky is almost but not quite a perfect blue and the water almost but not quite a perfect calm, the hills are just starting to take on a golden hue from the setting sun, and, as always, the sweet scent of fresh water is heavy in the air.
I love this deserted beach, this stretch of open water, the forests on the opposite shore standing uninhabited as far as the eye can see and the sky as free as if hung for my pleasure alone. No one would call this place spectacular, yet there is, to me, a calmness and familiarity about it that brings with it a peacefulness so strong it is almost painful. I lie spread-eagled out on the water beneath the sky and positively ache with the beauty of it all.
This is where I was born, where I grew up, where I returned both to have my children and later to raise them, and yet I am choosing, of my own free will, to leave. Stripped in too fast succession of too many of the identities that defined me - my husband moved out, my employer laid me off, and my youngest child went to college - I am left standing empty-handed. I have lost my way, my path, my direction. I have had, my whole life, a series of goals but now I cannot seem to remember what ought to be next. And so, of course, as would anyone else in my place, I have decided to dance naked on the beach, start up a blog, and go on a trip.
I leave at the end of the month.
I read the first ten chapters of Eat,Love,Pray once and I plan to follow suit; visit three countries, write 108 cathartic chapters, find a word to re-define myself along the way... Part of me thinks I am crazy to go; I have good friends and wonderful co-workers and acquaintances galore in the small town I live in. Even without steady work I have comfortable routines that see me through the week, even though we are on a break my ex is my tether holding me to reality, even though they have grown up and left my kids phone, e-mail, text, skype and visit me. I already live in the most beautiful place in the world. Part of me wonders why I am leaving and, more importantly, what, realistically, I expect to find. I was born in the 60`s, I know that `wherever you go there you are`. But a greater part of me feels the pull to go, the need to take a journey, literal as well as metaphorical, a hero`s quest if you will.
I hope I like it, this trip I am heading out on, If nothing else it ought to keep me from bemoaning the empty nest I leave behind.
01 September 2012
Disclaimer
Dear Diary, blah, blah, blah...
This is a blog in the very traditional sense of the word. It is neither a travelogue nor an informational site nor a discussion forum nor even a form of social networking. It is a an online personal journal. Nothing more. And it is unlikely to be of interest to anyone other than myself.
I remember sitting with my best friend on the beach in the shade of a big rock for hours one day when we were about twelve planning our lives; deciding what professions we would have, who we would marry, what we would name our children, how our houses would be decorated... Somewhere along the way I got caught up in the moment and forgot to follow those well-laid plans, and, now, soon to turn fifty, my actual kids having grown up and left home, I look about myself and find that I am not where I had intended to be. I feel the need to sit somewhere quiet once again (I have chosen to do so on a boat this time instead of beside a rock) and consider what to do next. So I will write a blog. And that is what this is - a personal reflection of where I have been, where I am, where I would like to go, and how, perhaps, to get there. Nothing more. And it is, as mentioned above, unlikely to be of interest to anyone other than myself.
PS The self-portrait attached is a reflection of me looking at myself in a mirror. I am wearing jeans and my favourite green t-shirt and am somewhat lost in the photo, as I am in life. Very appropriate I think.
This is a blog in the very traditional sense of the word. It is neither a travelogue nor an informational site nor a discussion forum nor even a form of social networking. It is a an online personal journal. Nothing more. And it is unlikely to be of interest to anyone other than myself.
I remember sitting with my best friend on the beach in the shade of a big rock for hours one day when we were about twelve planning our lives; deciding what professions we would have, who we would marry, what we would name our children, how our houses would be decorated... Somewhere along the way I got caught up in the moment and forgot to follow those well-laid plans, and, now, soon to turn fifty, my actual kids having grown up and left home, I look about myself and find that I am not where I had intended to be. I feel the need to sit somewhere quiet once again (I have chosen to do so on a boat this time instead of beside a rock) and consider what to do next. So I will write a blog. And that is what this is - a personal reflection of where I have been, where I am, where I would like to go, and how, perhaps, to get there. Nothing more. And it is, as mentioned above, unlikely to be of interest to anyone other than myself.
PS The self-portrait attached is a reflection of me looking at myself in a mirror. I am wearing jeans and my favourite green t-shirt and am somewhat lost in the photo, as I am in life. Very appropriate I think.
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