Set Sail

Taylor Beach, Parry Bay

Metchosin, BC

Photo: Gillian Cornwall, c. 2013

52. It's a heck of a number when I feel 21 some days and 100 on others. I suppose this is why some folks say, "Age is just a number." Well, yeah, it is. It's the number of years I've been knocking around this life trying to figure out what it is I should be doing - whether I should turn left, turn right, go back or stand still. Walking the path. 

Perhaps it's a midlife crisis - but that term makes me laugh. How the blazes would any of us know when we are at midlife? Anyway, lately I've been thinking about the finite nature of my time in this incarnation and trying to determine, once again, how I can make the most of it. I want to write. It's all I want to do really, but unless I go to work everyday, I'll be writing on the street. So I go to work and I do stuff that's probably helpful, but is it how I should be spending the time I have? Is it the choice that will lead me to say, at the end of my days, "Yes, I am satisfied. I lived well."?

I'm talking first world problems for sure. I know it because I've been without a safe home and I have gone hungry in my younger years. I don't particularly want to do those things again. It was hard and left even less time for pursuits such as writing. Survival is a full time job. What to do; what to do? I have a novel that is almost through the first draft but between work life and home life there are insufficient time windows to finish the job.

I need to turn things on their heads and get a different perspective. I feel sick. I sit all day at a desk and move paper and cyber paper and apparently it is helpful. I go to meetings and do volunteer work. These are all good things that help people but something is off. I feel an unusual weight, a drag off my stern, if you will... I need to trim the sails and find a fresh breeze on which to travel - perhaps in a new direction. Meanwhile, I sit, rather still in the water, waiting, watching for a ripple on the surface and I grow hungry as resources dwindle.

This isn't much of an inspirational piece (she said, pointing out the obvious). I'm probably over-sharing, but I am going to post it anyway because I'm fairly certain I'm not the only one who feels this way at times and what I want you to take away is that I'm thinking, searching, watching the horizon. My waiting is active as I look for the opening - for there has always been a way through. There always will be. So if you feel like this too, perhaps we can raise our noses to the air, listen for the whisper on the wind, trust our instincts and open up to the changing tides and times. Be of good cheer and remember that it is all about the "way". It is each step we take, each tack of the sail that takes us forward through our lives. We must do our best to enjoy the journey.

With love to each of you. 

-Gillian Cornwall, c. October 19, 2014.

There's always this...

Photo: Gillian Cornwall, c. September 2014