Scaring the Bejesus Out of Myself

I’ve begun daydreaming about the South Pacific. It isn’t that I’m not utterly enjoying where we are; I am. But as I read the letters and blogs from all the friends and the people we know who are cruising through the storied isles of Oceania, that particular adventure seems less like a someday-fantasy and more like an oh-yeah-that’s-where-we’ll-be-next-year scenario. The Tuamotos, Fiji and Tonga seem less like mystical fairy lands and more like our next destination.

I think this is the time where I should be researching. You know, actually pulling out a chart and a few guidebooks, and thinking about where we want to go and what we want to do in the six short months we’ll have in the region.

But I seem to be having a different reaction.

I’m fixated on the disaster stories.

I can tell you how many cruising boats sank in the South Pacific this year: three. How many went up on reefs: four. How many capsized: one cat (their blog), two monohulls. How many lost masts: one.

I don’t think this is healthy. It’s not as though I’m afraid to go to the South Pacific. Okay, I am. But I’m always a bit afraid.

It’s more that I’m kind of morbid.

I was always the kid who would wander through graveyards, and read the grave stones, “The Lord Give and Take But this Time the Lord Taketh too Much” and develop elaborate stories for myself about how the people died. When I was pregnant with Maia, I obsessively read horrible outcome birth stories and convinced myself she wouldn’t see her first birthday. So it almost makes sense that rather than imagining Ceilydh anchored inside a pristine coral reef I tend to imagine her sitting, in pieces, on top of one.

The thing is, anticipation is half the fun in life. And if my anticipation of getting to those magical islands is tinged with so much anxiety I develop an ulcer, I’m really selling the experience short. So from now on I’m skipping the disaster stories. Going cold turkey. If a headline says “Cruising Boat Catastrophe in Ceva-i-Ra” I’m deleting it and moving on to the happy stories.

 Yup, that's what I'm going to do.