did i miss you? not entirely

Do you ever go away to check and see if you missed parts of your life?

I just went on a little vacation to meet up with some of my family. Ok, actually, all of my immediate family is more accurate. My two sisters, brother, my mum and dad and as an added bonus my gran came along too. We met in the south of France for a barging holiday. It was one of these 'must-be-realized' childhood dreams of my father and even though my mum gets quite sea sick, she basically said we should just get it over with and go along with it. I'm not sure if the boat crash that came three days later was part of the plan or not, but it certainly was a low point on the trip. Long story short - we can-opener-ed the top half of the boat, knocking off the silver steering wheel on the upper deck of the boat that housed the seven Websters, and entirely wedging ourselves to a complete stop under a low lying bridge. I was actually quite pleased when we had stopped as the ride to this end was terrifying as we swayed from side to side in the whitecapped waters of the etang de thau just outside the banks of the canal rhone-sete. My mother was below decks, wretching her guts out, my sister was in black mood ignoring the family, my parents and brother up on deck trying to regain control and my other sister and gran helping my mum out. I wasn't a hero. The moment the decision was made to go forward into the etang, I was boiling furious, white-mad, and hysterical. I just wanted off.

Ironically this all changed the moment we hit the bridge. The boat stopped, and despite the four boats we had hit trying to moor earlier, and the financial damage we had just caused, and likely the emotional trauma we wreaked, I was instantly calm, and able to get everyone tied off, and their stuff off the boat. Solid ground seems to do wonders for me.

So, now I return to my home, my life here and my job and people have been asking me how my vacation was. Usually people say it was great and move on. I'm not sure that's entirely fair, so I usually find a glib way to say my dad crashed the boat and move the conversation along.

It was a good vacation in one respect. Being far away from your daily life, your tempo, your dramas and traumas, is quite liberating. And I needed it. I was mentally fried upon departure. The toll of job changes and the long standing mindfuck that I 'd recently cut ties with had worn my core to the bare minimum function level. What I got out of this vacation was wonderful... I found that I didn't miss any of it. In other words, any decisions I had made, friendships that were not working, relationships that hurt too much, jobs that were too unstable... I missed none of it. And you realize too, that you are more than any of it. It's a really good way to measure things sometimes. I did miss my bed and my shower, and am happy to be reunited with them.

I got home in the middle of Caribana weekend. It took me a while to get back to the time change correctly and when I did I was still quite anti-social and not really wanting to dive back into anything too quickly.

I went to a concert alone on Tuesday, for work. It was quite boring to be by myself at an all ages show that was energy fueled, and by all points achieved success by audience standards. I've done it many times before, but this one was kind of different because it actually it felt like work. (An aside... never ever go see Coldplay alone either, it will set you into a wierd emotional funk...) I did meet two other lonely onlys at the show that evening - a girl from Regina who had no friends who liked music as much as she and a guy from Winnipeg who had been recently laid off and had heard the bands on NME Radio so much he thought he'd better buy a ticket and check it out. And none of his friends were adventurous enough to go either. Before meeting these two characters, I had no idea that lonely concert-going was happening as much as lonely movie-watching. I used to do the movie-watching a lot because there were so many art-flicks I wanted to see that after a while I wore out my welcome with even my artsiest of friends.