Sovereign Nations

It’s less than 3 weeks until I go under the clippers!

I’m excited, not nervous at all.  That shows my privilege, of course.  I’m not losing my hair to cancer treatments.  I don’t have to deal with the sense of powerlessness along with the feeling of air on my scalp.  And of course, it’ll grow back.

I’m getting a lot of kick-back on this…it’s amazing to me how much.  I interviewed for a job and was told that it was terribly unprofessional to shave my head bald.  The owner of the sailing club I was (yes, was) working for said, “Parents won’t trust their children to the club,” and “You’ll have to wear hats at work.”  I’m more determined than ever to go through with this.

The other not-so-great area is in the fundraising.  I’ve gotten some very surprising donations and I’m excited about every bit of it.  But I’m way behind my goal and would need some hefty figures to reach it.  Or a lot of little ones.  Hey - you know the math - every little bit helps if everyone gives a little.  A little or a lot - either way I’ll be thrilled.

For a lot of people, times are hard and charity is last in line for financial priorities.  Most of my friends, however, have been struggling most of their lives.  It always seems like $20 is a significant amount of money.  It is, and yet I’m still asking for it.

If you’re not comfortable giving the organization your personal information, I get that.  I don’t like being on mailing lists either.  There’s an alternative - send me the money on paypal and I’ll pass it along.  I can use your name or I can put it in as anonymous, whichever you prefer.  If that sounds good, send it to me under the email address dena@svsapien.net.

I’ve never done anything like this before, and I won’t be doing anything like this again.  Asking for money isn’t a comfortable thing for me.  So if you have any thought like “I’ll contribute next time”…please do it now.

https://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/mypage/participantid/364043

I know, it doesn’t sound much like what the newspapers are saying, but I’ve always enjoyed bucking a trend.

We keep going through these cycles of stagnation and action, over and over again.  We race through the cycle compared to most people, because stagnation isn’t really an option for us.  There is a point in the cycle, however, that is stressful and exciting and irritating and labor-intensive, all at the same time.

We’re there.  Right now.  Or maybe one small step past that point.

I’m talking about the point where we’re resolved to settle some short-term questions and knuckle down for a while.  Where we’re open to opportunity and keeping our options open, but seeking the best path forward with an eye to following it.

Moving to Baltimore was a direct result of tearing ourselves out of a stagnant period - back from India and depressed about it, back on a boat and happy about it, working for West Marine and depressed about it.  The bottom line was unhappiness with Norfolk/Hampton, with the driving, with the bosses, with the expenses.  When the census applications showed signs of fruit, we did what it took to make it happen.

Now here we are.  My job pays pretty well.  We more-or-less like our new neighborhood, though the ubiquitous dog shit is a real irritant.

We moved onto the dock for Getaway Sailing and immediately got wrapped up in figuring out whether or not we’d be able to adopt the company and make ourselves happy there.  That answer was not slow in coming.  For financial reasons, for business-style reasons, the answer was no.  However…

Getaway was for sale and a new owner with an influx of energy and money would change everything.

Meanwhile back at the ranch…

Carefree, the boat club James had been dockmaster for in Hampton, has locations up here.  As a franchise, the various locations have individual owners and James had conversations coming from all directions.  He started juggling opportunities.  One owner dabbled in the idea of buying Getaway and having James run it.  Another took James on a tour of his locations and introduced him around the organization.  Wined and dined (or beered and dined, I guess), James kept an eye on the possibilities and the complicated geometry of which had the best combined experience of boss, boats, job, environment, etc, etc, etc…

And I was working on the books for Getaway.  And talking to parties interested in buying.  I imagined an Office Manager/Bookkeeper position that also did business development.  James imagined a Dockmaster position that ran the fleet and facilities with a good dose of storytelling and community-building.  But it wasn’t moving fast enough and the pressures to decide were getting stronger.

So James accepted a job in Edgewater, MD.  This job lacks opportunities for me and means an hour-long commute to the census building.  It’s well-supported with a great mechanic staff, plenty of dockhands, a dynamic boss…sounding good.  I could look for work in Annapolis and reduce my commute to a biking distance…maybe.  It’s a short-term irritant with some long-term potential.  However - it’s motor city…not a single sailboat in the club location.

This decision didn’t do it.  It didn’t settle in and become our new direction.  It felt temporary, conditional.  We discussed, again and again, what we would want, how we could be convinced to stay with Getaway.  We wondered, again and again, what kind of person the new owner would be, whether or not the interested party was going to move forward and buy.
To confound the issue just a bit more, I got “shortlisted” for Quality Inspector at the census job.  Suddenly, I’m looking at a couple dollars an hour more, plus the benefits that I’m not getting as a team lead.
Will Getaway sell?  Will we dedicate ourselves to resurrecting and succeeding with Getaway under its new owner?  Will I get the QI job?  Will James work for Carefree again?  Why do we feel in flux if we’re on a path to Edgewater?
So.  Last night, James and I were fifteen hours away from sailing.  We were going to move south, a six-hour adventure with a new set of photos to be taken, a new set of restaurants and grocery stores to explore, new people and work.  The taste of adventure was on my tongue.  On the other hand, once we arrived, we would be hours from good sailing - too far up the South River to reach the Bay on a casual evening sail.  Another summer of rarely sailing doesn’t sound so good.  We looked at one another and said it again - we were off for a new adventure.
Or were we?  Just before this moment, we had finally discussed possible employment with the very serious prospective buyer of the Getaway Sailing club.  He offered us both jobs but not at the pay we wanted.  We had to think.

A good-money job on a government contract.  A promotion and raise on that same contract.  A waterfront office job and inundation in the Baltimore boating community.

A dockmaster here, a dockmaster there.  A powerboat fleet, a sailboat fleet.  A rural or city environment.

If you’re reading this because you know me or because you know James, I’d like to know what you think we did.  Did we go with the sure-thing jobs?  Dive into the most accessible adventure and sail to Edgewater, dedicating ourselves to that version of the next year or so?

Well?

Here’s what we did.  We wrote a letter.  A pretty damn good one, if I do say so myself.  In no uncertain terms, we told the prospective buyer of Getaway Sailing what we were worth and what we wanted to do.  We told this poor man that we had to know before 9am this morning, Sunday morning, whether or not he was going to employ James.  He gets a little leeway on negotiating with me because I can give notice anytime.  But if he didn’t say what we wanted to hear, right now, we would sail off into the sunrise.  So call as soon as you get this.

When I called him to ask him to check his email, I went straight to voicemail.  When I looked at James after leaving the message, we shared a wide-eyed moment of floating hopes and expectations.  Would he get the email?  Would he agree to our terms?  What if he backs out of buying the business?  Can we put off a sure thing for a more exciting maybe?

Would we sail away or would we stay?

He called at 8:49pm.

We’re still in Canton.

Climbing out of the bunk at 0800h I feel the tingling of the ice as I lightly brush my toes against the hull on my way to the galley to make my morning brew. The chill chases away the sweet memory of our beloved electric blanket as the steam huffs from my lungs slowly dissipating through the main cabin of our boat. I kick on the propane cabin heater, start up the morning chemistry and wait patiently for Mr. Coffee to deliver his magic concoction. After the brew is brewed and the first sips of warmth ooze through my body I notice that the winds are howling so I look out the port hole to discover the snow has piled up in five foot drifts from our moorage out at the very end of the dock to the gate. As the first cup takes hold of my mind it also settles into the rest of my body, once again, inspiring a familiar need…
You see, we came to Baltimore under sail in the dead of winter for employment purposes (only) and with that decision came, as usual, an entirely new way of dealing with, well, our shit.

Along with the seemingly endless paradise of our on going voyage of discovery around the planet comes an issue that, while under “normal” circumstances, would be a non-issue for “normal” people is indeed a VERY big inconvenience when the snow is descending from the sky in sheets like a biblical plague.

Simply put, we are human and human beings have certain biological functions that just can’t be avoided; in other words, even global circumnavigators have to shit like everyone else, only we can’t just nip off into the lavatory in the next room, we have to (ummm, GET TO) walk more than a 1/4 mile to the closest restroom facility… That’s right, at this marina they don’t have restrooms at the top of the docks like almost every other marina we’ve live at over the last ten years they have only one central facility and when that inspiring familial need arises it’s a very long ways away.

…I don my foul weather gear with meticulous precision, knowing that my journey will be a long and somewhat treacherous one.
Now, over the last week we have been pounded by the most amazing weather in the history of Baltimore weather recording, or rather, every single previous snow fall record in the history of Baltimore, Maryland was shattered in the last five days and we STILL had to be human through those record breaking storms.

… When I try to push open the companion-way hatch it is jammed by a thick pile of heavy frozen precipitation and a distant panic wells from within.

In the past we have had many variations on the distances between our boat and the restroom facilities “at the top of the dock” and although it is a bit of a hassle to use the dock restrooms it is much better then the alternatives which are; either shit on the boat and live with a slight smell of human stuff until we can pump it out of the holding tank or pump the un-treated human matter directly in to the environment around our home. Neither one of those possibilities are real alternatives to people like ourselves, meaning, caring environmentally conscious and responsible boaters so the only real solution to dealing with this issue is to use the Head graciously provided by the marina that we are calling home at that time.

…The wind was blowing the snow in thick horizontal lines that covered my back within seconds of digging my way out of the companion-way and by the time I made it to the ice covered gang-plank at the head of the dock my vision was distorted with biological need! At that point I only had a quarter of a mile to go before my relief.

At the beginning, when we were still new to all this environmental boating stuff it was an order of pride to get up and “walk the walk”, as we used to say to the top of the dock. It was our responsibility to show, by example, how people should treat this wonderful way of life with great care so we walked our walk EVERY SINGLE TIME without exception with our environmental pride clearly displayed upon our grimacing faces and to this day the only thing that has changed is the newness has quite thoroughly warn off leaving only the self righteous expression of grim determination in it’s wake.

…By the time I reached my halfway point I was so stealthily covered by my frozen environs that you couldn’t actually see me slogging through the massive drifts that lead to my seated sighs.

And yet it is still, to this day, somehow worth it.

I have heard that active environmentalism (such as NOT shitting in the water around your boat) is in fact an act of selfishness nothing more, that the Earth will survive no matter what we do and if you are not protecting our world for future generations of humans (like I am not) then environmental living is nothing more then an extra expense or rather, a big hassle. And really, in theory, that makes a lot sense to me, but for some reason, call it aesthetics,  I still experience a great deal of pride when I walk my walk.

…When finally I reached the marina restroom facilities on that particular “walk” I found that my key card for the lock was still sitting in the galley table back on our boat a little over a 1/4 of a mile away and the look on my face had indeed changed.

…Living the dream baby, LIVING THE DREAM!