Tag Archives: life

Determination and Going it Alone

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A chat with a fellow boater starts me thinking about the importance of independency.

[Note: I wrote this post at least two weeks ago and, when I was done, I decided not to publish it. I thought it might be a bit too self-serving. But then I had an exchange with another user on Mastodon today, after my (solo, of course) cruise across Lake Michigan. You can see a screen grab of the exchange below. I decided that it was very much related to the rest of the content in this post — the elephant in the room, so to speak — so I decided to add it and publish the whole damn thing. – ML]

Lately, I’ve been meeting a lot of people on my Great Loop trip — more people than I’d met on my journeys down the inland waterways and up the ICW. People are going out of their way to meet me and chat with me. Most of them are impressed that I’ve been doing the trip (mostly) alone. These people are invariably couples and they are blown away by what they consider an amazing achievement.

A Rockstar? I don’t think so.

But it all came to a head yesterday when I was in a restaurant in Killarney, ON and a couple at a nearby table called me over as I was leaving.

They recognized my boat by its name and had seen me on it. Apparently, there’s some talk going around about me among the other Great Loop cruisers. A woman doing the Loop alone!

The wife of this couple told me I was a “rockstar” among the Loopers. That’s pretty hard to believe, since I don’t participate in any of the online forums most Loopers are drawn to. But okay, I’ll take it.

Cruising the Great Loop as a Learning Experience

We chatted for a while about cruising and the Loop and the percentage of people who jump into this 6000+ mile journey with little or no boating experience. The husband of this couple had boating experience similar to mine before buying his current boat, a Mainship: growing up around small boats and owning a few throughout his life.

But there are far too many people who start the Great Loop with little or no boating experience on a boat that’s brand new to them. Some folks even sell their boats as they’re finishing up the Loop but continue to cruise to the end, looking forward to the day they can be done and leave their boat for good. I find that mind-boggling.

I met a couple along the Trent-Severn Waterway who had begun their cruise near St. Louis and claimed they “felt done” by the time they were in Florida — not even 1/4 way through the trip! They were selling their boat the day I met them, but wouldn’t turn it over to the new owner until they got to St. Louis moths later. I’m still trying to figure out why they continued a trip they apparently weren’t enjoying. This is pleasure boating, folks; it shouldn’t feel like a chore or an ordeal.

We talked about how much experience a boater can get from a Great Loop trip — that’s actually the number one reason why this trip has meant so much to me. Simply said, it’s made me a good boat captain. How can it not? Navigating more than 7500 nautical miles (so far) on rivers, lakes (including Great Lakes), canals, the Gulf of Mexico, the Intracoastal Waterways, and the Atlantic Ocean. Dealing with locks, bridges, other boaters, and marinas. Cruising in weather from severe clear and calm to thunderstorms with hail. Resolving minor (fortunately) mechanical issues, like losing a stern thruster or having a bilge pump that won’t operate automatically. Having to find and make good stops to refuel, buy groceries, get water, dump garbage, refill propane tanks, and do laundry.

How can all this not make you a better boat captain and all around long distance cruiser?

Determination?

And then one of them said, “You must be pretty determined to do this trip by yourself.”

For a moment, I didn’t know what to say. I never thought of myself being determined to cruise the Great Loop. I just saw it as the boating world equivalent of a classic road trip, like cruising Route 66 or driving up the California Coast. I thought about the experience of visiting all the places along the way, seeing how people live, checking out the local history, eating the local foods. I thought about the challenges of planning and navigating a course, dealing with weather, and living the confined space of a boat. I thought that a boat trip that somehow started and ended in the same place without backtracking would be a great adventure — before I even knew the Great Loop existed.

The Great Loop has never been a “bucket list” item for me, something I can brag about to friends. I’m not going to hang a gold flag sold by a for-profit “club” that exists solely to separate cruisers from their money. Heck, most of my friends don’t know what the Great Loop is and, if they’re not boaters, they don’t really care.

So have I been “determined” to finish the Great Loop? For me, the goal isn’t the achievement of “crossing my wake.” It’s the journey and what I can take away from it to make me a better person.

The Solo Aspect

The Woman Thing
Here’s the exchange I had with another Mastodon user today that sums up my thoughts on the “female aspect” of my situation, which, frankly, I’m pretty fucking sick of dealing with. Read it to understand why.

It’s the solo aspect that everyone seems to focus on. This conversation really brought that point home to me.

Honestly, I don’t think that doing this trip solo is a big deal. In so many ways, I think it’s better than doing it with a companion. Not only do I get to make all of the decisions — and change my mind as often as I want to — but I don’t have to deal with the pet peeves we all develop when traveling with someone else.

I like to travel alone. I’ve been doing it since the 1980s in my first corporate job and, even when I had a “life partner,” I often made trips by myself. So there’s no part of traveling alone that’s unusual to me. It’s traveling with a companion that’s odd and somewhat difficult at times.

Yes, there are additional challenges when you’re driving a boat by yourself. There’s no one else to handle the lines or put down the fenders when docking or sit at the helm while you take a pee or make a sandwich. (And no one to make a sandwich for you.)

But can’t we all rise to the challenge? Having to deal with fenders and lines while docking alone has forced me to learn how to control my boat in confined spaces — I’m basically forced to get the boat up next to the dock at a near standstill so I can step off with a line and secure it. (There is no jumping on the dock from my boat and very little tossing lines to strangers, since half of them don’t know what they’re doing.) Having no one around to take the wheel when nature calls has taught me a few tricks for leaving the helm briefly while under way without dropping an anchor. And when I know I have a long cruise ahead of me, I make lunch in the morning, before I leave, so all I have to do is fetch it out of the fridge.

It’s problem solving. How do you do the work of two people when you’re just one person? You find ways to make it work. That’s part of the challenge of cruising. That’s part of what makes it interesting to me.

And let’s be real: having a second person aboard who doesn’t know or care about helping out when “needed” is worse than being alone on board. (I’ve been in that situation and it sucks.)

The other question I get a lot is about whether I get lonely. The answer, for the most part, is no. I’ve been alone for so much of my life that I’m used to it. I keep busy. I don’t have time to be lonely. The only thing that makes me a little sad is that I can’t share this incredible adventure with someone I can talk to about it in the years to come.

I’m not the only solo cruiser out there

I also want to mention here that I am not the only person doing this trip solo. Nagui, who I met while cruising last year, completed the loop solo in his Rosborough, Boundless.

I’ve also met Matt on Seaview, Ed on Freedom, Mark on Brandywine, Michelle on Plan B, Chris on Brown Eyed Girl, Bob on Bayleaf, and Harry on a homebuilt sailboat whose name I can’t remember. (Get boat cards, folks!) My apologies to the folks I missed in this list. While not all of these people might be “doing the Loop,” they are all on long-term cruises that require them to do everything that needs doing.

Independence > Dependence

Meanwhile, I feel bad for the folks who think they can’t go it alone. The people who depend on the company of someone else to do things.

I’m not just talking about cruising, either. I’m talking about the things we do in everyday life: dining out, going to the movies, attending live events (do you know how easy it is to get an excellent seat for concerts and shows when you’re a party of one?), traveling, and participating in social activities that may include mostly couples. If you’re single and think you can’t do the things you want to do by yourself, why the hell not? Why depend on the presence or moral support of another person when you’re perfectly capable of doing things on your own? Be independent!

And the only thing worse than feeling as if you can’t do things alone is feeling that you can’t do anything without the partner you might already have, someone who simply doesn’t want to do anything you want to do. Been there, done that! Got a ball and chain? Cut it loose! Live the life you want on your terms.

The End is Near

My trip is coming to an end. I’ll be done in less than a month now. Yesterday, I spent a few hours planning the rest of my route and the stops along the way. I wanted to make sure I could finish it on time — I created a deadline when I bought plane tickets to get home. Unless there’s some crazy bad weather ahead of me when I hit Lake Michigan, I should be fine, with a handful of days to spare in case I need to change plans.

I’ve already planned my next two cruises when I get back to the Pacific Northwest. First, I’ll attend the Ranger Rendezvous, which I first attended the day after I took delivery of Do It Now in September 2022. And then I’ll join a flotilla of boats to cruise up to Desolation Sound and back in late September. There’s a chance a friend will join me for that trip, but I’m not sure right now whether I want company.

And then I’ll let Do It Now get some rest in my garage while I enjoy the comforts of my “dirt home” for a while.

I live there solo, too, and I love it.

Staying Focused with a Daily Planner

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I return to my custom daily planner sheets to stay focused, waste less time, make more of my day, and be more productive.

As I’ve aged, I’ve been struggling with productivity. I just can’t seem to do as much in a day as I used to.

The Way Things Were

I remember the height of my writing days. I’d sit down to write a book I was under contract to produce by a certain date. I’d start with an outline or table of contents and I’d sit at my desk for up to 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, to knock out the book, chapter by chapter. During that time, I didn’t do much of anything else. But when I was done, I’d take a few weeks to goof off and have fun. That’s when I learned to fly helicopters and did some of my best solo trips. And then I’d get back to work on the next book.

I wrote 85 books from 1991 through 2016. That’s an average of about 3 1/2 books per year. I know that one year, I wrote 10.

In the beginning of my writing career, I also did consulting work, led hands-on computer training classes for a few organizations, and wrote articles for various magazines. Near the end of it, I was juggling flights and clients for my helicopter charter and agricultural services company. I also started a bunch of hobbies, some of which held my interest for years.

But these days, I find myself kind of drifting, spending too much time on social media — don’t we all? — and not getting the things done that I need or want to get done.

Return of the Daily Planner

Daily Planner Page
My Daily Planner form has the sections that work best for me.

A few years ago, when I realized I was struggling with focus, I tried a bunch of different daily planner solutions, finally coming up with my own custom daily planner sheets to meet my needs. I printed a bunch of planner pages up, put them in a looseleaf binder on my kitchen countertop, and started each day by planning it out.

The planner pages have several sections:

  • Heading. This is simple: just the date and day of the week. What’s odd is that since going freelance in 1990, I haven’t had “weekends” the way other people do. I always worked when there was work to do and did personal things or goofed off when there wasn’t. The only time weekends meant anything after 1990 was when I was married to a man chained to a M-F, 9-5 business schedule. My weekends were his weekends. Fortunately, I have’t had to deal with that for a long time. But I still specify what day of the week it is because there are certain things I can’t do on weekends, like make calls to certain businesses.
  • Priorities for Today. This is three lines with check boxes for the things I think are very important to get done that day. I usually have at least one item I put in this section.
  • To-Do List. This is 17 lines with check boxes for other things I want to get done that day. I try to fill this up with specific achievable tasks in no particular order. And yes, sometimes I put very easy things on the list; this ensures I check something off that day.
  • For Tomorrow. This is four lines with check boxes for things I don’t necessarily want to do that day but should get done the next day or soon.
  • Schedule. This is a box with half-hour time slots starting at 5 AM and ending at 8:30 PM. I use this area two ways:
    • Appointment schedule. If I have a known appointment or task that need to be done at a certain time, I block it in, along with any travel time. This can be telephone or video calls, doctor or vet appointments, or lunch dates. Anything that I have to do at a specific time.
    • Time Use. I fill in the space around any appointments with how I’ve actually spent that time as the day goes on. For example, it’ll take me about an hour to write this blog post so that’ll be plugged in at the 7:30 to 8:30 slot: “Blog about planner.” This makes me conscious of how I spend my time and how I waste it.
  • Health. The health section lets me log water intake — I don’t get thirsty so I don’t drink and am always dehydrated; this reminds me to drink — and various exercise and diet stats from my watch and, when I’m dieting, my calorie counter app. I’ll admit that I don’t use this section as much as I should, but I keep it there in case I want to start using it again.

Things are different now. I’m traveling, currently along the east coast, on my boat. There is no spacious kitchen counter where I can leave my Daily Planner pages. But I have some pages with me and the original PDF file to print from. I pulled a page out to consider it and wound up handing it off to Jason while he was on board. He was enthusiastic about it. That got me thinking that maybe I should start using it again, too.

So I did.

Yesterday was the first day in a long time. I listed my things to do and recorded how I spent my time. I found that it kept me very focused and made me more productive. How? Well when I finished doing some things and found myself idle, I’d say to myself “What next?” instead of reaching for my phone or tablet and wasting a bunch of time online. I’d look through the uncompleted tasks, pick one I felt ready to do, and get it started.

I repeated this throughout the day. The result: I finished nine out of 12 list items (but unfortunately, not the priority item) and made progress on a tenth item that could not be finished until Monday. Would I have gotten as much done if I didn’t use the Planner yesterday? I don’t think so.

Today, I planned another day. That Priority item is back and I’ll do it when I finish this. (This blog post, by the way, is not on the planner — although it should have been; I really needed a new blog post. I’ll add it to my schedule but not to the To Do list so I can check it off. That’s cheating.) Throughout the day, I might add a few more items; there are currently a total of 13.

And to further encourage me to stick with it, I’ve ordered a looseleaf notebook with a clipboard front cover so I can leave the list where I’ll see it, whether I’m on the boat or back at home.

Planning on My Mind

Planning is really on my mind lately. I’m writing a multi-part series for my Great Loop blog about cruise planning and have created some custom planning pages for that, too.

Although I have all kinds of planning tools on my laptop, tablet, and phone, I find that pen and paper are the best tools for me. As Jason pointed out this morning, mobile devices are distracting. He’s right! I saw his text about that and replied to it when I reached for my phone to use the calculator. And then I forgot to use the calculator until I got back to this post and realized I needed to do some math. Best to leave the mobile devices on the table or in your pocket.

Any thoughts about this? Share them in the comments.

Letting Things Go

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I think about my inability to “let things go” and realize, with the help of a friend, that it might not be such a bad thing.

The Atheist's Guide to ChristmasYears ago, I went to a Solstice party at a friend’s house near my home in Washington state. This was back when I tried to spend the entire winter at home — maybe 2013? — before I realized that I needed more sun in my life than that latitude would ever offer in December and January.

The party was well attended by the “freethinkers” group I was a member of. We didn’t celebrate Christmas, but we celebrated the Solstice. I celebrated it as the end of the ever-shortening days and the return of the sun.

We had a bonfire (of course) and we gathered around it. There was snow on the ground and we’d spent some time sledding down a hill nearby before it got dark (at around 4:30 PM). One of the partiers handed out slips of paper and pens. We each wrote down something we wanted to let go of forever on that slip of paper. I’m pretty sure I wrote down something to do with my wasband or divorce or the dull, dead-end life I’d had with him. Then we each burned our slip of paper, symbolically destroying these things to remove them from our lives forever.

Ah, if only it were that easy!

As they say, time marches on. I’ve changed a lot since that winter night spent gathered around a fire with friends. I’ve achieved amazing things: building a new home on an amazing piece of land, growing my helicopter business far beyond what it could have been in Arizona, starting a successful jewelry-making business, exploring new hobbies like beekeeping and watercolor painting, and, more recently retiring from my work as helicopter pilot, selling the assets, and diving head first into a life cruising along the east coast in my own boat as a US Coast Guard-certified boat Captain.

Maria and Pups
Me and my pups during a recent stay at the dock in my dad’s backyard. While I’m not convinced that he fully understands what makes me tick, at least he has a clue, accepts the way I am, and doesn’t try to tell me how to manage my life. I appreciate that.

I’ve also resolved to keep toxic people out of my life, a decision that has cut me off from a handful of friends and most family members. After being in a mentally abusive relationship for so long — and not even realizing how it was affecting me until long after it was over — I simply decided I didn’t want to take shit from anyone ever again. Life is too short to let other people get in your head and mess you up emotionally. Why should I be laden with the baggage heaped on me by other people? Best to let them go and move on.

And that’s what I’ve done. Or at least tried to do.

Understand that I’m very happy in my life right now. I have the freedom that I need to do the things I want to make myself whole, to feel fulfilled. For a very long time, I didn’t have that. There’s so much in life that I wanted to do but was held back by people who either didn’t understand what made me tick or were actively trying to prevent me from achieving my own goals because of their own personal failures or jealousies. While I’m not by any means “rich,” I have enough retirement money socked away to do the things I want to before I get too old to do them. (As I’ve said elsewhere, I named my boat Do It Now for a reason.)

Jupiter Island Beach
Dawn at the beach near here the other day. Today’s sky isn’t quite dramatic, but I’m hoping for more sun when I do today’s walk.

As I type this, I’m sitting on my boat at an anchorage along Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway, feeling it rock in the wind. Later this morning, I’ll take my dinghy ashore, cross the little island there, and take a good, long walk on a deserted beach, picking up shells along the way and feeling the warm wet sand on my bare feet. Sometime before New Year’s Eve, I’ll travel down the ICW past Fort Lauderdale and Miami, and cruise down the Florida Keys to Key West. Along the way, I’ll anchor out and snorkel in aqua blue waters from the swim platform of my boat, along reefs full of coral and tropical fish. I’ll do this on my terms, on my schedule. And if I want or need to change my plans, I’ll do it without pushback from anyone else.

How can I feel anything other than joy?

But lurking behind the daily joy I experience in life is sadness. It comes mostly from the betrayal of someone I loved and trusted and it has been made worse by the knowledge that people in my family don’t understand or care about me. They say that blood is thicker than water, but in my life, most blood is like a poison acid that burns. Casting these people from my life stops the pain they were causing and helps me move on with the life I want, but I retain the sorrow of lost relationships that once meant a lot to me.

Simply said, I can’t let go of my past and memories that haunt me. So here I am.

I related all this to my friend Jason just this morning as I was preparing to write this blog post. Jason is a very smart, thoughtful, and intuitive guy. His response via text was extremely helpful and worth sharing (with his permission, of course):

Part of being alive might be living through pain. As in … while it doesn’t feel good, it may be an essential part of the human experience.

I’ve also heard that pain can be a messenger. And sometimes we learn more about ourselves by sitting with and reflecting on our pain.

I always love this chapter on joy and sorrow from The Prophet. It helps me think of pain in a positive way:

The Prophet Book Cover

I won’t share the whole quote here; you can read it for yourself. But here’s the meat of it (for me):

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

– Kahlil Gibran

What does this mean to me? I think it explains why I feel so much joy in my everyday life — it’s because I’ve had so much pain in the past. The pain dug a hole that the joy can fill.

So maybe it isn’t necessary to let things go completely to move forward. Maybe having some pain is necessary to have an equal amount of joy. Maybe I should stop thinking about letting things go and just keep moving forward. I’ve been doing pretty well so far.

How about you? How are you doing? What do you think of all this? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments on this post so we can all get something from what you have to add.

And, by the way, Joyous Solstice to everyone!