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| Bella in a Milwaukee Boatyard, 12/2013 |
I've never been a
very good example of anything, except perhaps being too stubborn to give up
on an idea; too dumb to understand when the odds are stacked against me. The
last week or so has been full of important anniversaries of how seven
years of 'stubborn' has actually worked out. I invite you to celebrate
with me. Last December, I emailed a guy in Milwaukee about a boat he
was selling. That boat turned out to be s/v Bella, now the love of my life. Bella and
I are sailing south next summer.
Most of my adult
life I've been dreaming of, and working toward living on a boat. I
actually did for a while in Sarasota. I found a boat and quit my last
“career” job in April 2007 and set to work pursuing my dream in earnest.
That boat was quite a project and like an old house, for every
project I got started I found three more that needed done. I kept
slogging along but my dream was about sailing not about perpetual boatwork.
Last August I had a
long, heart-opening discussion with a friend. Accidentally, I had
laid bare exactly what I needed to do next. Before I knew it I had
placed an ad online that began: “I'm broke, I'm exhausted ...” and 12 hours and 5 emails later, I had found that boat a new home; I was free
again.
Well, free more in
the sense of free fall. There were a few rough days back then.
Friends and family will attest that I went through a period of
swimming in possibilities. I was going to take a months long Zen
retreat, then I was going to move to San Francisco; wait … Boston.
There was a live-in internship at a homeless shelter I looked into; a
motorcycle, an RV, etc. Without the project I'd been working on for
seven years, I
no longer had anything
looming over me every day. Suddenly, I had no forward motion. Without forward
motion, called 'way' by sailors, a boat
has no steerage. I was that rudderless boat for a time.
Since
I found another boat and things are back on track, more than one
friend has complimented me for
giving over to the universe, for
trusting that things would work out. I have smiled and nodded at
the idea, but the trust
story
is apocryphal. At the time I never thought “OK, I will now let the
universe handle this.” I was pretty messed up. I'm sure I drove
those around me crazy as
every day came a new,
really important idea of what I could
do next.
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| Bella, getting ready, June 2014 |
Not
knowing anything better to do, I kept stumbling toward my vague plan.
Somewhere deep in my heart, I knew that if I didn't keep
working toward a boat and a voyage, as I took my last breath on this
planet I would wonder what it would have been like. The takeaway for
me was that my plan was good, I had simply picked the wrong boat. I
no longer needed to be local. I needed a lucrative job to save money
for the next boat. I won't rehash the details again. I have written
about my frustrations, letting go of the last boat, finding Bella and getting help to buy her, getting her ready and sailing her 'home' across LakeMichigan.
The first
anniversary was December Second; the day I sent the email
inquiring about a boat I saw on the Milwaukee Craigslist. December Third,
I learned she was still
available; December
10, I went to see her; and
despite thinking I would play it cool, I made
the deal on the 11th.
Along the way, even before
I had gone
to see Bella, I was
tightening up the details with a
friend who helped me buy her before I had had time to build my
savings.
Voyaging
is not about sitting in some idyllic harbor watching the sun set, its
about raising the anchor and moving on. OK, there will be sunsets in
idyllic harbors too.
Perhaps a part of being
stubborn is a way of trusting the universe. Either way, I went
from letting go of an onerous project to finding
a boat that was ready to sail. In August of
2013, I watched my project boat go off down the highway, out of my
life. Four months later, I had found Bella. This last June, I sailed
her 'home' to Muskegon from Milwaukee. In
7 or 8 months, Bella and I are headed south. The one thing I've
wanted to do most of my life.
No one dream is like another. What is your dream?
Celebrate with me by pursuing yours! If you let go of
the specifics of how you think it should go, the universe will help.
Like sailing, you can't always go straight from Point A to Point B, but if you learn to use the wind, you can get there from another
angle. Maybe you want to start a bakery, a dog shelter, or a tree
farm. Maybe you don't want a major change but you want time to make
art or to learn to play an instrument. You might want to find a way
to help others; a way to serve, to strive and thrive. Whatever it is,
please be stubborn. Don't hold tight to how you think it should be
done, but be open to another way, but keep a 'weather eye' on your goal.
Look to the horizon and don't get mesmerized by the water right in front of you.
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| On toward the horizon ... |
