Lifeguard’s station. Fort Lauderdale Beach, Florida.
I’ve always looked forward to being in the water, and as summer draws to a close I feel a pang of regret in that I haven’t hit the beach as much as I should have. I don’t even have the pittance of a consolation that comes from swimming in a pool; my transition into the new job and my subsequently busy work schedule have prevented me from a typically carefree summer.
In a way the many icons of the season—from the oppressive but relievable heat to locally grown peaches—do not have as much an effect on my psyche more than my need to be near a body of water. Sitting here on my desk I remember a few bits and pieces from my youth. I’ve always wanted to be in water, for some reason. While a swimming pool works fine, nothing beats being in an open body of water. I’m twenty-six and I still can’t describe the great feeling I have whenever I swim. Is it the soothing feeling of being afloat? Or is it the acceptance that a moderate amount of control needs to be relinquished in order to enjoy the ocean? Is it the feeling of the breeze or the sound of the waves? Is it any combination, or is it all of these? Again, I am unable to exactly verbalize the “feeling of right” that I get when I bring together everything around me.
I just know, for sure, that whenever I do go to the beach, I leave with a profound sadness that I rarely feel in other possibly sad situations. I suppose, that with the fast way with which we live our lives these days, there is an allure to just leaving it all behind: the cell phones and broadband internet and forty-hour workweeks (hah!) and just relax and take it all in. With a digital camera and an offline computer I would be happy for a little while in the compromise between tech and tranquility. There is an almost juvenile quality to this desire for just “leaving it behind,” which, I suppose is the rationale behind taking periodic vacations, though for a few of us the return to “reality” can be far more difficult.
I hope that next summer I would be able to spend more time at the beach. Until then I’ll have to hold on to the pictures I have taken: a promise of vacations to come.
August 29 2006, 23:41 | Filed under: Living fine,Photography | 1 Comment |
The past months—months where I have written less and less of my dealings—have been filled with the most interesting, serendipitous turns of events since I can remember.
It feels like so long ago, when I went on a vacation to Florida and discovered that I did not belong in the occupation that I was in. Despite that, whenever I think back on the week when I got back from that vacation, I was filled with the greatest excitement towards a change whose full effects would be unknown to me until only recently. I can remember how relieved I felt when I got hired where I work now the Monday right after I got back from my trip. It alleviated a sense of fear of the unknown and of unemployment that I had, because new job or not, I had decided on leaving my old occupation.
It was that bad where I used to work, where my supervisor deceived me through omission, where the best and the hardest working ended up picking up everyone else’s slack and yet would get no recognition.
It’s almost five months since then. It was five months in my old job when I decided to quit, and yet now, I feel well acclimated to what I am doing these days and I have no intentions of quitting. Not that there has been a lack of change in my life; the tables have turned and in more ways than one, I am someone’s supervisor now.
And one thing I have learned from my old supervisor was that I am to never lie to my employees. Then again, I am a person for whom candor serves as both a greatest strength and greatest weakness. And while there are now so many more challenges to face in my day to day occupation, with a team that is more than adequate to face our needs, I am now beginning to settle into a rhythm that I have not felt I have had in a long, long time.
I find myself reading fewer and fewer blogs. I have no care for the news and I only watch a few TV episodes. I am, however, getting back into the swing of writing both in my personal journal, and I think that I am ready to pick up writing online yet again. With no need for fanfare other than that yearning to have something to say, I welcome myself back online.
August 27 2006, 0:13 | Filed under: Living fine | 1 Comment |
Recent comments