The Journey

More Camping Stuff

     (Written between 9/24 and 9/27/07)

    This is probably going to be little bits and pieces of stuff as I come across them while I'm here.  Too small for a post of their own but stuff I don't want to forget.

    I find myself sighing a lot.  I don't know if I do that all the time and am just too distracted to notice or if I really need a lot more oxygen when I relax.  It was very pronounced the first night I was here--like every minute or two I would have this big sigh--almost like I was decompressing. 

    I'm sleeping 12-14 hours a day.  If I "only" sleep 10 or 12 hours at night I nap 2-4 hours during the day.  I didn't know how tired I was.

    I spent an entire day in the cabin--the only times I went out were to go to the bathroom--I didn't even shower.  It was amazingly restful!

    As much as I loved being alone, being quiet, being unscheduled, I find I miss people a little bit.  I think that if I could stay a week I'd actually be glad to go home.  As it is, I'm not exactly excited about it but I don't really mind, either.  I'm fine with not minding--far better than not wanting to leave.

Camping Alone

   (I went on this little trip this past week)

    I started out writing this like a travelogue.  You know, "I had planned to leave the house at about noon but..."  It was pleasant and even amusing most of the time. but that's not the important part of my camping trip.

    I'll sum up what originally took several pages to say in the following:  I discovered I hadn't been on a vacation in as long as I can remember and recalled Anne Morrow Lindberg's book _Gifts From the Sea_ (worth the read if I recall correctly) where she talked about spending one month each year in a cabin by the ocean.  She spent the time in reflection.  I yearned for that month for years and years.  Thus, when thinking about a vacation I looked for and found a lovely little (12x14 ft) cabin in a state park and rented it for four days (the most they had available at the time.  I went up on Sunday and will leave on Thursday (I'm still at the cabin as I begin this) and it's been everything I had hoped for and more.

    Not as many humorous anecdotes as those several pages but it covers the basics and spares you from the verbal equivalent to the proverbial slide show of years gone by.

    What truly applies to this blog is what I discovered about myself while in my cabin in the woods. 

    You know how people keep telling all of us to find our passion and do that one thing and be endlessly happy? (Or something like that.)  What I've discovered is that I'm a generalist rather than a specialist.  I'm 56 and have no idea what my passion is.  I was feeling rather a failure about not being able to figure out something that sounded so simple on the surface of it.  I thought for a moment I had found it when I discovered photography but while I love it and will learn a lot more about it and improve my skills and have lots of fun with it, it's not my passion.  But then I started wondering if it couldn't be that photography is my passion-of-the-moment and there will be another one along at just the right moment and when that happens perhaps photography will take a backseat to the new one. 

    I'm not sure any of that is true but I'm certain I haven't found my passion.  Perhaps I will one day but perhaps there are a lot of us out there who either don't have one or have suppressed it so far down we can't find it any more.  I'm not giving up on it, just allowing myself, giving myself permission, not to have a passion so I can join in with the popular crowd.  As always, I'll be a bit of a renegade, going a bit against the tide but still allowing my boat to head downstream (pardon the mixed mataphors).

    As you can see, none of this is very well-formed but I always find that writing like this helps me solidify my confused thoughts a bit more and so I put these writings in my Journey Journal with the assurance that I'm certainly not the first person to have arrived at this place in life and not known where to go from here.

Wishlist

Have you ever had a wish list?  I don't mean a list of what you want for Christmas or from the book store.  No, I mean a giant wish list of all the things you'd love to have in your life.  I've decided I want one.  I would love it if I could have it on a piece of paper that was like the old-fashioned parchments that were rolled up and they went on for yards.  OK, why can't I?  There are rolls of paper--somewhere--I know I've seen them.  I'll start looking.  In the meantime I'll start with a computer list because that looks like it goes on and on forever if I set it up the right way. 

Join me, won't you?  Let's make a list of all the things we truly want in life.  I believe that writing it down makes it much more likely to happen.  It somehow sends it out into the universe and ta-da--there is is--sort of.

Maybe none of that is even the point.  I just know I want a list of all the stuff in the world I want but I want it so I can be happy about all the things I find fun and exciting, not so I can feel miserable that I don't have them.  That wouldn't be any fun at all. 

Let's do it!  I might even think about putting mine somewhere you can see it--I might not.  It will depend on what's on it, you know?  I know I share a ton with you but there are some things best left private--for all our sakes. :)

I Appear to Be Back

I've been gone a long time.  What have I been doing?  Hmmm, in some ways not a lot and in others, a TON!

In case you still remember what I wrote WAY back on June 20th, I felt inspired to write this tonight.  I love it when inspiration hits.  Of course a friend asked about my blog and that brought it to the forefront of my brain and here I am.

Here's what happened with the apartment in Seattle.  (I haven't read through all the posts from back then--just hit the high points--so bear with me if you remember more than I do.

As I sit here thinking where to begin I find myself getting all tied up in time-ordered knots.  Rather than starting at the beginning, I'll start from now and work backwards sort of.

For the last two months or so my fibromyalgia has been kicking my butt!  Last month I earned just a wee bit more than rent would have been at the apartment I looked at in Seattle.  This month it was a little more but still not enough to really make it over there.  Am I glad I didn't try to move?  YES!!!!!

Another interesting thing--have I talked about bi-polar with you?  Possibly, possibly not.  For now I'll just say I've been diagnosed as bi-polar and once I started doing some research on it, some of the things I used to just shake my head over and wonder what in the world I was thinking when I did stuff started making a lot of sense. 

What does that have to do with the apartment?  I was having a minor manic episode when I thought I could go on vacation and move in the same month--and have that be just a month from when I looked at the apartment.  Good grief--get real! 

The combination of all of that has caused me to be a lot more cautious about moving right now.  I need to find out how the bi-polar is going to shake out with the meds I'm on.  I need savings to make the move and savings to help me get through a tough month or two should they pop up.  I need to figure out what I would do if I can't work enough to support myself even over here in Bremerton.  Lots of things I need to do before I can move.

What hasn't changed is knowing it's the place I need to be.  I was talking to a friend yesterday and she said she knew someone who was selling a lovely 4-year-old double wide mobile home in an adults-only park in some small town that is basically a bedroom community for Seattle.  I was so comfortable telling her how much I appreciated her thinking about me but if I can't move to where I want to be, I'm very content where I am.  I'm not moving "from."  I'm moving "to."  Wow!  That's interesting.  Most of the moves I've made over the years have been running away from something.  Very interesting.

So, there's the Seattle part of what's going on.  You'll probably be hearing more from me in the next few days/weeks.