Reflections: 3 weeks/April 19

Sibari, Italy---When the sun is out, the mountains in the distance seem reassuring. I am a foreigner here, yet my soul feels at home.

When I arrived by train from Naples, I was nothing less than traumatized from everything that happened before I left and the weight of this big of a change. I knew that there would be an adjustment period mentally and told myself to be gentle on my self-lectures.

Filled with so much emotion when I arrived, it took me 3 days to cry. But I needed to, so I did---as silent as I could inside a 44 foot sailboat, in my bunk, at night with the captain at a loss as to what to do.

My emotions have been mostly predictable. Some days are so busy I don’t make time to think about things, but more days, I spend a lot of time reflecting and thinking…maybe too much.
Is it better to zoom through life filling it with friends, family, deadlines, obligations, good times and bad times without the time to reflect? Or screech to a screaming halt every once and a while to determine: am I happy and what do I want?

I’m really not sure.

The time so far has been a mixture of brief periods of happiness that I don’t remember having in a long, long time. The kind of happy that you felt as a kid on the first day of summer vacation, with so much anticipation of the future you could just explode. Countered by stages of, “OMG, what have I done? I closed my business! I’m where?” Insert my personality as I go through the day with silliness and jokes, all avoidance techniques of thinking too much. Then inject brief periods of nothing less than depression, which I choose to call “being bummed out”. And back again to all the excitement and anticipation of being in the Mediterranean for the rest of this year and on to the Caribbean for 2011.

It’s been good to stay here in Italy, in one spot, for the beginning. Soon we will leave for Greece. We know leaving is pending the opening of the only canal leading to the gulf, and the repair of one important boat part; both not in our control.

I guess because every day is new and significant, it seems like a LOT more time has gone by. But, I remind myself, it’s only been 3 weeks.