Doing everything and nothing: Transition

We’ve been living on the boat full time for about three weeks. After the seemingly never ending period of moving out of the apartment, we spent the first night not quite believing there wasn’t yet more stuff to cycle to the marina and onboard. My morning routine now involves waking up, taking photos of the sunrise (sooo many photos), walking to the showers, coming back, having a coffee then setting off to cycle 12km to work. I’d been whinging on for a while about the ever increasing size of my thighs, so the long and inclining commute is very welcome – for both me and Tom! You maybe wondering what Tom’s up to while all this is going on. Lucky for him his office is much closer and he often works from home, so every morning I leave him tucked up in bed, reading. Coming back to the marina after work too is lovely. I cycle diagonally right across the city from one corner to the other, and the transition from polluted packed main roads to quiet beachside paths helps leave the busy work day behind.

So why is it then when I’ve parked my bike and I’m back on the boat, I feel somewhat uneasy (“antsy” as we call it) and unable to settle. I didn’t feel like this when we were living in the apartment. Maybe it’s the change of routine? Before I was mostly on autopilot. I’d come home, we’d cook dinner then we’d be on laptops doing, well, doing something, I can’t quite remember what. Now I’m home and a bit lost as to what to do. The wifi is crap so laptop time isn’t really an option. So we started doing some boat jobs. Those of you with boats will know that any job, however “small” it may appear takes hours, so we were finding ourselves not going to bed until after midnight, leaving me with less sleep than I really needed.Ah, maybe I’m just tired? That could be, but after a few early nights I still feel the same way. Maybe I’m missing the stuff we sold? Nah. Maybe being in a small space is getting to me? Doesn’t feel like that. On the days Tom’s on the boat he often get started on some jobs so he’s full of energy when I get back telling me what he’s learnt, almost broken, and then fixed. We’ve met some nice people on our pontoon too, so it’s not uncommon for him to grab a few beers with them at lunchtime and exchange dramas about maintenance. Maybe I’m feeling a bit left out?

After a few weeks of cycling, bearing in mind I’ve gone from zero to 150km a week my knees are starting to grumble, so today I decided to take the train. Getting to the station involves a lovely walk along the beach, and I decided to use that time to try to figure out why I’m feeling the way I do. Those of you reading this thinking, “What the hell has she got to be miserable about?” are completely right; I’m fully conscious of the fact it’s utterly ridiculous. We’ve got the most exciting adventure of our lives just weeks away and I’m being grumpy. This has to stop. Thankfully, during this morning’s walk I cracked it.One of the things I learnt about myself years ago is I’m a bit of an all or nothing type. If I’m going to do something it’s either full -on energy and commitment, or not to bother. I also don’t like being on the periphery of things; I’m either involved, or not involved. Maybe I should be trying to sort this out, but for now, it is what it is.

I realised I’m struggling a bit with this period of transition. Work is still really fun, but it’s been common knowledge that I’m leaving for over 3 months now, and people are (naturally) starting to say, “Oh, you’re still here! When are you leaving?” Many of the things we’re discussing will also happen after 25th May, so they’re not really things I can get stuck into. The boat jobs, same story. I’m around in the evenings to help out a little but an hour or two isn’t really enough to do anything meaningful. We’ve been working with an awesome startup since December (more to come about that) and because of the move, my involvement in that reduced too because we simply didn’t have the time. My clothes (weird, bear with me) are all now dark winter clothes, it’s spring in Barcelona so nothing really works. The boat comes out of the water next Tuesday so we can clean the bottom, so we’re moving into an AirBnB for 2 weeks, which means packing up, and moving out. Lastly, we don’t really have a plan for when we set off in June. The plan was not to have a plan, but that’s unsettling too.

Almost immediately, having figured out why, I felt better. What properly cheered me up though was the weekend we just had in Germany with Tom’s family. It made me realise that no matter what’s going on in our lives right now, knowing our friends and family are there as our solid foundation is a huge comfort. You know who you are 🙂