{"id":3411,"date":"2014-09-30T06:19:30","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T13:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=3411"},"modified":"2014-09-30T06:19:30","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T13:19:30","slug":"how-lucky-halifax-nova-scotia-09292014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=3411","title":{"rendered":"How Lucky \u2013 Halifax, Nova Scotia \u2013 [09\/29\/2014]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lovely_and_lonely_2_by_kel_esteves-d6m11ph\"<\/a>And when worst comes to worse
\nAnd we all know it will
\nThank your lucky stars you\u2019ve gotten this far
\nAnd tell yourself\u2026how lucky you are!<\/em><\/p>\n

There are times, as there are always times with every person in every job, everywhere, when I detest my form of employment. I know this may come as a shock to some people considering how amazing my job really is (and it is amazing, that\u2019s never in doubt, not ever), but even we have days when we can\u2019t bear the idea of dragging ourselves out of bed. When life just seems a bit\u2026much.<\/p>\n

The thing is, something always happens to snap me out of it. Somehow. Sometimes I just get tired of hosting my own pity-party, sometimes someone says something that makes me laugh so hard I can\u2019t stay grumpy any more, and sometimes\u2026I read the right book.<\/p>\n

That last one, that last one is important. And current.<\/p>\n

Books present themselves to me, I swear they arrive when I need them. For example, The Mists of Avalon<\/em> keeps dropping in my lap ,though I am still \u2013 as of this contract \u2013 refusing to listen to its demands that I finish reading it. But that\u2019s an obvious one, fantasy reads are easy to fall into. Non- fiction though? I never read non-fiction. Why read biographies? There\u2019s always a death at the end!<\/p>\n

And then, this book called Some Girls<\/em> drops into my lap. In the midst of the week I was \u201callowed\u201d to feel sorry for myself (Amras had just left, my cat was still sick, I was seriously overloaded at work, I was ill, and Toffy had just quit as my shore-side supervisor\u2026welcome to the pity party). I originally picked it up because the subject matter related vaguely to a story I\u2019ve been working on and I figured it would be good for research. But \u2026then I started reading. Here was the story of a girl, once a theatre major, who made all the wrong choices\u2026well, perhaps not wrong, but\u2026reckless, dangerous, and who ended up somewhere\u2026pretty dark.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t worry, that\u2019s not her. That\u2019s not your little girl up there. She\u2019ll never turn out like me.<\/em><\/p>\n

And something about that pulled me up short. It\u2019s like the whole concept of the railroad tracks that I was going on and on about last summer \u2013 any turning along the way and I would be different.<\/p>\n

Is my life perfect? Is anyone\u2019s? No. Because there\u2019s no such thing as perfect. But the list of things I had seen and accomplished before the time I was 30 years old spanned 7 pages, and it\u2019s grown since then. I have a family that\u2019s still intact, I have people who love me, I have a job that \u2013 while hard, and draining and challenging sometimes \u2013 is more rewarding than the counter I would still be stuck behind had I not fallen into where I am. I have a ship-board family that actually takes the time to notice whether or not one of our number is alright. I\u2019m relatively healthy (most of the time), and while my life is complicated\u2026there are\u2026so many roads I could have walked down, so many roads that people like me with pasts like mine have walked down, that could have ended up so shrouded in darkness that I don\u2019t know that I ever would have found my way out.<\/p>\n

A long time ago, I read another book, which became a very dear, very old friend, I don\u2019t remember the exact words, but it went something like this:<\/p>\n

As the hours went on, I found I let go of a lot of my bitterness. Did it matter that one child with skinned knees was pouty because the world didn\u2019t genuflect every time she walked by? The sea didn\u2019t seem to think so\u2026and as the voyage went on\u2026neither did I.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2026am one of the lucky ones.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And when worst comes to worse And we all know it will Thank your lucky stars you\u2019ve gotten this far And tell yourself\u2026how lucky you are! There are times, as there are always times with every person in every job, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,77,17,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-below-the-waterline","category-east-coast-adventures-2014","category-reflections-below-the-waterline","category-summer-contracts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-T1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3413,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3411\/revisions\/3413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}