Brian's World

Sailing

I don’t write about sailing nearly enough.  I could blame it on the satellite internet out here, but I only need the internet to post my thoughts, not to write them down.  Notepad does wonders for offline development of most things these days.

Call me old fashioned, but sometimes I just don’t trust that the GPS I’m using has me on the right route sometimes.  I mean sure, it’s never led me into a crazy storm or into pirate territory but it’s taken a pretty confusing route to get me where I am these days.  I think I need to dock somewhere and update the maps or something (assuming there are ocean maps that change) because lately I think it’s been sending me around in circles or taking extremely strange directions.  If it could hear me, I might be inclined to say “What gives GPS?”  Unfortunately, I’m left to hear it declare “recalculating” which I’ve identified is code for oops, didn’t mean to end up here… my bad, lets try again.  If I was the GPS I would try to recalculate less, putting more effort into avoiding getting lost in the first place.  The more it has to recalculate, the more I start digging around for those old paper maps that I used to use as a backup.  While they weren’t nearly as sophisticated and fancy, they generally worked fairly well (and I didn’t have to announce “recalculating” when I was lost).  When the GPS recalculates a dozen times in a row I’ve almost had the urge to throw it overboard or something but then I usually calm down an realize that would be polluting, which is bad… and it might have some good emergency use.  I’ll give it credit for trying, despite all it’s recalculations.  For now the GPS will stay in place as primary navigator, I’ll remain cautiously skeptical of any wildly sharp turns but we’ll see what happens.  What’s a little more time at sea anyways.

I also worry about cycles a lot.  I’m of the belief that life doesn’t have to be nearly as cyclic or repetitive as it seems, but changing the norm is hard and requires consistent effort.  There are lots of things I’d, in theory, like to explore changing about my life but they all seem very daunting and hard.  Wearing black jeans on Thursday was fairly straightforward change, changing a social dynamic is significantly harder.  I tend to accept that given the limited timeframe I should just give up and abort any thoughts that things can be different.  Better luck next time would be more encouraging if I knew there would ever be a next time, but I’ve cut my losses before and I can survive doing it again.  It’s too early to start my debriefing, but I will probably point toward a general lack of skill paired with an off-putting image.  I might also cite circumstantial / situational failures, but I’m of the more recent believe that those failures can primarily be attributed to the personal flaws.  A story for another day.

Good night moon.