Dived Out

I gave up and gave in yesterday and decided that my time could be more productively spent for the balance of this vacation moping about rather than diving.

OK, not the entire truth, to be sure, but there's some element of it in there. I frankly had no desire to dive, for whatever the entire truth turns out to be. The simple fact is, I woke up and had no urge to put fifty pounds of equipment and make the world's easiest dive, much less go off and explore.

I was tired. I still am. Mostly, I napped yesterday, trying to rest up and catch up the insomnia I've been suffering this trip. It did my body a bit of good. My mind, eh, not so much. I do feel self-defeated, still.

Some of you have, in comments and questions, tried to frame or delve deeper into this issue of ebing unable to stick to a plan. I don't have all the answers and so it's possible you're right when you say that there might be an element of denial, that I don't want to think about the whole retirement thing and that's why I avoided looking into it.

But I know me better than that, and that behavior usually happens when I'm farther along in the process, like I've looked at a couple of houses and actually contemplate making a bid for one. Right now, I'm in a very safe zone of not even knowing if this is where I would want to retire, so it's all a very safe "information gathering" phase, something I handle with aplomb.

I usually don't fuck up until later on in the process.

Y'know, my mind wanders to a time last week when I was hoping to shoot a rainbow. It was about 7 in the morning, and I kept urging the sun to rise a little faster to catch up to the storm that was trying to outrun it.

It didn't, but as I stood at the end of the dock, I glanced up and noticed a long pencil, complete with pink eraser and long elegant wings, flying overhead. It was a flamingo.

Who wouldn't want to retire to that?

I've worked hard for something on the order of 35 years, ever since freshman year on college. I think I'm ready to retire and I think this might be the place to do so. What I really need to do is come back down on my own, forget my scuba gear and actually do what I set out to do: rent an apartment or condo and live without diving, without the lure (unless I feel like renting gear one day) and get to this.

Oh...and Murphy's Law. My neighbor was feeding the cat and picked up my phone because it was ringing. It was the nursing home calling about my mom, so she tols them I was on vacation and in turn called me to let me know.

But you know, I'M ON VACATION so I don't carry my phone around with me (the idjit...) and she left a hurried voicemail message which I didn't pick up until 2:30 this morning that got garbled in the ether, so whatever phone number she left was lost, and instead of just letting the machine pick up so the nursing home would know to call my sister instead, she tried to do the right thing and ended up doing exactly the wrong thing.

I emailed my sister and told her what happened. Let's see if I can relax just one more, one last, day on Bonaire.

Other people really really suck.