Having/Craving the simple life

This trip has had a much simpler feel than any we've previously taken. There is no grand goal, and not really anything to prove. Scott diligently calculates tides and currents to allow us to meet necessary gates. We don't go all that far most days (if we move at all), and so we can afford to sail at 2 knots if we want to; we'll still make our destination.

For the most part, I've been able to let go of not knowing what waits for me in my email inbox. I feel, however that that is changing. The first few weeks out felt like summer vacation. Since most of our trips begin shortly after a business presentation of mine (often that had my anxiety-laden stomach twisted in knots for days ahead of time), there is a feeling of relief when we stow the docklines. As we leave, I know it will be weeks before I again need to take care of the serious business stuff. The daily stuff can often wait for a few days and get caught up on in batches. And I can continue to get other non-timed work done nearly daily. So there is no work to resist, and what I do complete has an effortlessness and creativity to it that I wish I could carry to land.

My mind has begun traveling forward in time recently, however. (I am lucky, though. I'm afraid this affliction has been plaguing Scott for weeks already.) I've used up the work I had worked ahead on, and now must buckle down a little more to stay caught up. Plus, proposals for fall presentations are due mid-August, and I have another presentation in Seattle in the beginning of September that I will need to prepare for with limited battery power and Internet connection. Already, those anxiety pangs have begun to quiver.

I have to remind myself that September is still nearly a month away, and that my worry does no good whatsoever. Time bends while on the boat. When it takes a week to get places, days seem like merely an elongated breath. Next month might as well be the day after tomorrow. Then, on the contrary, when battery power is measured in minutes, minutes pass with an unmeasurable briskness. It is no wonder we need to consult the watch to even know what day of the week it is, much less know the date.

On the whole I am enjoying this trip more than any so far. It is simpler in so many ways. Still I'd like to make it simpler yet, but I haven't figured out how. I think we'll probably keep this lifestyle for a while, though, so hopefully I'll have more time to keep making it less and less complicated. And in the spirit of less complication, I'm going to quit trying to add a picture to this post. I just don't seem to have the signal strength for the upload of it. Another day, I guess.

perfectly simple

Today I had no reason to play with my new headphones, I had the boat to myself. Scott has been downtown, and the boat had only the sounds I added to it, along with the songbirds who manage to throw their tweets all the way across the water to the boat. This afternoon the soft rain began, and since we've had a break from it for a while, the sound of it hitting the deck above my head is welcome again.

It has been a perfectly simple day, and the epitome of what I think people think living on a boat is like. This morning I got work done between cups of tea. After lunch I read some. At one point this afternoon I decided to take care of another menial boat task--cleaning the rust out of the contraption the air filter goes in. Such tasks go best when the mind can follow a story of some sort. I checked through our movie selection and found nothing that held my interest. I thought back to the early days of boat life, when I had even fewer DVDs to choose from. My entertainment back then was the Morning Stories podcast, which I awaited every week and diligently listened to on Saturday mornings while choosing a daily project. I have long since stopped listening to Morning Stories. It is one of those things that just seems to have slipped out of my life, probably when when Dad got sick and everything changed so quickly. The day I learned of his illness began of the end of my first stint on the boat. Old routines were quickly uprooted, and many have never been found again.

During lunch today I listened to the latest Travel with Rick Steves podcast, leaving me without the storylike background I was looking for during a metal-scrubbing undertaking. Then I remembered that I had an audiobook on my computer that I've never listened to! Oh, what a lucky day! The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is set in northern Wisconsin. The descriptions of the landscape take me right back, and the story is quite good as well. Who can be disappointed with writing that likens an otter floating down the river as, "a self-contained canoe of an animal"?

After scrubbing the air filter holder, there was no better afternoon break than to sit down with a hot cup of tea and listen to a story for a while. For some reason, breaks like that seem easier to take on a boat, especially when it is raining, and a perfectly adequate amount of work has already been finished for the day.