As usual.
It is 3 am and I
am wide awake, unhappy, and writing in my journal.
3 am is not a good
time for me to write in my journal. I seldom have anything positive to say at 3
am. This is true today.
Sigh.
Three small things
happened after school today (by which I mean yesterday of course since at 3 am it is now already tomorrow.)
1) I interviewed
someone who actually is willing to move in with me. He’s unemployed and smokes,
but hey, I guess I’m not in Kansas anymore. (In Deep River when I was looking
for a roommate Emily just appeared. She was young and cute and an excellent
cook, she was brilliant (had a degree in Math) and enterprising (starting up
her own business) and had interesting parents and friends, also, she happened
to be named Emily which was fun… I’d just assumed I’d be able to find a
similarly wonderful roommate here. Maybe not.) I say yes to him, but, now, at 3
am find myself second guessing that. Do I really want to live with someone
unemployed who smokes? No. Not at all. He’s the first person in 2 months who’s
shown any interest in moving in here. If I turn him down then there may be no
one. Am I that desperate for a break on the rent? I can’t figure it out any
more.
2) I went to a
Rotary talk by someone who’d hiked the Akshayuk Pass in Auyuittuq Park up on
Baffin Island earlier this year. It’s a walk that Andre and I did 25 years ago.
Watching his slide show (breathtaking
scenery) and listening to the stories (some good days and some memorable ones)
and hearing about the people he met there (including a French family who were
in their 9th year of an around the world voyage, their boat frozen
into the bay near a small arctic town, on purpose, last winter) I am nostalgic,
swept down memory lane, caught up in memories of the adventures Andre and I had
on our trip (I want to interrupt the talk and tell about my own, ‘I was there
too, and we, and I remember…’. But of course I don’t.) and, also, I am envious.
The speaker was invited to participate in this hike. All expenses paid. Custom
made gear. An ex-National Geographic photographer along as part of the
expedition so fantastic photographs as keepsakes. Wow. I want to be him.
3) I chat, very
briefly, online, with a friend of mine, who lives on a boat, and learn that she
and her partner are taking a break and heading to Brazil for three months, to…
well it doesn’t matter really, does it. Wow. I want to be her.
Three months from
now I will be here. In Arnprior. I will be teaching everyday. I am not looking
forward to it. I with either be living with an unemployed smoker or too broke
to even consider going away for the summer. I can’t right now, at 3 am, figure
out which would be the least bad of the evils. The potential for self-growth
seems slim. I will not, of this I am over 99% certain, be being invited to go
on an all-expense paid trip of a lifetime to the far north, nor will I be
retired and living on a boat and planning exotic vacations elsewhere.
I seem to remember
that I had fooled myself a few days ago into thinking there were some silver
linings to my being here, imprisoned (by self-choice) in this existence, but,
right now, at 3 am, I find that highly unlikely. I can’t, at all, imagine that
there is any up-side to my being trapped here, trapped by my job and my forlorn
financial circumstances, and I can’t
seem to think my way out of the paper bag.
In desperation I
watch the latest episode Castle. Wow.
I want to be Beckett.
Does anyone else
see a pattern here.
Sigh.
Yes.
A typical 3 am.
7 am.
I ought to be
getting ready for school. But it is pouring rain outside and my desire to go is
at an all-time low. I have one very whiny grade 9 student who grates on my
nerves and is getting me down. I don’t want to go to school. I want to go to
Baffin Island again. Or Brazil. Or back to Bora Bora. Or even somewhere I’ve
not yet been. Bali maybe. Or Bangladesh. Or, heck, even Bermuda would do, or the Barbados, or, or, or…
So. What I have to
do is figure out a way to get there. I have to figure out a way to live the
life I want to be living. (And pay for it.) It won’t be easy. There must be a gazillion people
who would like to be invited to go on an all-expense paid trip to Auyuittuq compared to the number that actually get invited to do so… so I’ll just have to
be creative. I’ll have to take my head out of the paper bag that was
suffocating it at 3 am and put my thinking cap on instead.
I can do that. Of
course. Why not? Just watch me!
