"And I'm One too Many Mornings, and a Thousand Miles Behind…."

One of the things that people don't often talk about while cruising are the spells of restlessness you suffer from.  You'd think that since we are on this "adventure" that every day would be filled with novel, mind expanding experiences.  That the days of feeling "stuck in a rut" would be over.  Nope, not the case.  There are times when you just feel restless and bored, like you're directionless, floating around from day to day just "relaxing".  I find this feeling very disorientating, and it most often happens to me when I've been anchored somewhere for way too long (in this case Georgetown) with too much internet.  Right now, what's bothering me the most is being stuck here due to weather and not getting to be in St Thomas to work and just going into debt.  Since being stuck here I find I have fallen into this mindless rut, acting like a crazy person, surfing the web often addictively, compulsively checking my Facebook feed and looking at Instagram pics.  Basically doing a boat-load of nothing, repeating this meaningless act over and over again, while gaining nothing substantial from it, a bit like chasing my own tail…(but dogs make it look like so much fun!)   I find that the less productive I am, the more depressed I get, and more depressed I get, the less productive I am.  These spells can last for days and during this time I start to worry and panic about the future, our plans, being in debt, and so on.  Yeah, pretty demented.

This feeling of direction-lessness,  it's maddening and at times depressing.  Not knowing what the next year is going to bring and not even knowing where you will be, can both be paradoxically exciting and mentally exhausting.  You wonder if you're just wasting your life away, not settling down, buying a house, having kids, working towards a retirement...you know, what most people consider responsible. Perhaps this is the reason why people have these things in the first place...the house, the kids...so that they also have a reason to live, something to work towards.  I guess I underestimated the power of this notion.   Now I understand a little bit of why my father tells me he doesn't want to retire...he always says "if I rest I die" (sounds a lil more eloquent in Chinese, but you get the point).  I guess not having something to work towards can be considered mental suicide.  We all need some sort of structure and something to move towards.  For some, it's all about the goal and doing everything in their power to get to that goal, losing sight of everything along the way.  For others, it's not necessarily the end goal that matters but simply having a purpose.  I believe there has to be a balance between these in order to be truly happy.  But I suppose there is no right answer.  

After all of this, I have to ask myself?  What am I working towards?  I know it's all about traveling and seeing the world and the wonders of nature....but is that it?  No, it's more than that.  I guess what I want from all of this is personal enlightenment.  Seeing what life has to offer from a different perspective, a little outside the norm.  Seeing the good, the bad, and the ugly both from myself and from this beautiful, cruel world…