Just my imagination
Running away with me
yes it was just my imagination
Running away with me
So many people who are in a ‘normal’ job dream of the life that those of us out here on the waves already have. I mean, look at what we do every day, this afternoon I rode in a Brazillian rickshaw with a cold drink in my hand watching the world pass slowly by as we trundled up and down hills. A few days before that I was ankle deep in the Amazonian jungle, before that I was at the biggest street party in the world, and I had the chance to dig my toes into the sand of Copacabana beach.
I’ve had my breath taken away by the northern lights painting themselves across the black canvas of the Alaskan sky. I’ve seen Petra, climbed the Great Wall, clambered up a mast of an Australian tallship, and biked my way what felt like half way across Melbourne. And that’s just me, you could fill several volumes with the adventures of the crew of just one ship. Sky-diving, horseback riding through the surf, paragliding, catamarans, swimming with sharks and sting-rays, getting beaten down by the heat of the Tahitian sun, swimming in the Amazon, hunting for crocodiles, counting stars off the bow, drinking world class champagne one night and beer straight out of the bottle the next. The street markets of India, the great cathedrals of Europe, Ireland, London, Iceland, Italy, Holland…you name it we’ve seen it, you point to it on a map we’ve probably been there.
And not one bit of it, not one scrap, is what many of us daydream about in our off hours…
You truly want to know what many of us daydream about? So many of us, with our adventure magazine lives, and our occasional imitations of Indiana Jones?
So many of us daydream about normal, even though sometimes we completely forget what normal is. We think about sleeping in on Saturdays (heck, a life where ‘Saturday’ is an actual thing!), grocery shopping, balancing a checkbook without it involving long distance internet costs, backing cookies and having someone come home from work at the same time every day to laugh at the fact that you have flour on your nose. We daydream about bagged lunches and home cooked meals. About what colour we want to paint our walls and a door that really truly locks. About putting up bookshelves and home offices and home recording studios, about being able to turn up our stereos without fear of a call from the cabin next door or from security.
Few of us out here have a home, not in the traditional sense. Most of us are fortunate enough to live with family, or couch-surf with friends during our far-spread vacations; simply because it has been deemed pointless to maintain a house when you are never there to live in it. But that being said, when we close our eyes, I suspect we all have an apartment in our minds’ eye; we can tell you what colour those walls are (mine are green), what kind of doors open to the patio (mine are french), we can tell you everything right down to the colour of the counterpane and the thread count on the sheets in the bedroom. We are so hungry for the reality sometimes, that we create it down to the last detail; because the more you daydream about something the more you think that one day…
Who knows, sometimes daydreams come true…
Until then we find comfort in the routines we do have: the two episodes of our favourite show before bed, the cookies from the onboard café, the server who knows exactly what we want our our salads. The little things that make life out here a little bit more human…
And as I’ve said before, sometimes I would trade all of it, all the adventure, all the supposed glamour, for just one ounce of normal…
And a door that locks behind me….when the only copy of the key is on my keyring.