Like this:

I am definitely a man of quotes.  Throughout any given day quotes from movies, book, friends, or just random quotes I have collected over the years (so far about 20 pages) go through my head.  This week has been no different, but a few quotes in particular kept coming to mind. 

“What a long strange journey this has been” —Jerry Garcia

“In order to succeed we must first believe that we can” — Michael Korda

Change can be so constant that you don’t feel a difference until there is one.  It can be so slow that you don’t know that your life is better or worst until it is, or it can just blow you away, make you something different in an instant. –life as a house

 It’s not about getting it right, it’s about knowing when its wrong and doing something about it.–Dawson’s Creek (yea, I know what you’re thinking, but hey I like the show, back off)

If you take too many sticks out of your ass, then you have no backbone” –Friend from long ago

Accept that some days you’re the pigeon and some days you’re the statue.” –unknown

It has been an interesting week that has once again gotten me to think about the past six months.  We are so close to being done, but our hydraulics guy keeps on delaying, which in turns delay our departure.  The boat is looking great; most of the work is done.  Today the plumbing was finished, the A/C units are installed, the engines are working, and all the major stuff to be done is the hydraulics (which is kind of out of our hands) and the electric.  It has been frustrating for me the past few weeks trying to figure out these systems and make sure they work.  I know that if I mess up or overlook something it can be catastrophic for the boat and crew somewhere down the road.  Yes, I do have people/experts coming down and checking on my work, but they can’t see everything, so after thinking about only this for weeks on end, it has taken a hard toll. I haven’t been sleeping well.  Most days I sleep for an hour or so then wake up and can’t get back to sleep until around 4am, then I only half asleep once everyone else gets up to run or whatever around 6 or 630.  I have just been in this place of exhaustion and frustration for weeks. But it has been frustrating, although I am frustrated mostly at myself.  By now I should be able to have a better handle on all this, but still confuses the hell out of me some days, and I know that I am better than that.  We had our solar panels installed yesterday, while a news crew from channel 13 out here was interviewing Ben.  A company here The Energy Outlet arranged for the donation or the panels and they installed them but added them to a system that I am struggling to understand, even though I built it, has been more difficult than I thought, especially since I am finally putting together the navigation portion of our electronics.  Now it should be a relatively simple set-up, ask any marine electrician.  But for a guy whose entire electric background is in theatre and a little bit of housing, it is not quite that simple.  I have three different people who stop by sometimes to check my work, and they all tell me to do things differently.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  Ask any three experts something and each will have their own way, but they are just confusing me more.  So this is where my second quote keeps coming in.  I consider myself a relatively intelligent guy, so like I said it is frustrating when I can’t fully understand the job in front of me.  So I took a step back today and just cleared my head.  I thought to myself that I have been able to understand systems and concepts far more complex and difficult that this and I pushed all of what the experts told me out the window and found my own answers.  I found and read all the expanded versions of marine electronic installations I could find and put together a wiring diagram of exactly how our system needs to be with all the components I have.  So the frustration I have had all week was finally solved by simply taking a deep breath, and first believing that I could succeed.  A lesson that I have often found myself forgetting (maybe my friends are right in that I am too hard on myself).

But a lot has changed in the past few months, let alone the past few years.  I have spent the past 4 years beating myself up over a mistake I made that in essence changed my life.  After the walls came crashing down and I lost one of the most important people in my life, I started to finally get my life on track.  I had said for years prior that I wanted to and that I would but I never seemed to really get right.  But this was the final straw that got me to take myself and my life a little more seriously.  I got more direction and confidence in myself, but it has been a long uphill battle to try and dispose of long time habits.  I have always been a flirt, and probably always will be, but it has been trying to keep it in check and not using solely as a defense mechanism that has been a change, which is a long process.  Trying to convince myself that I am worth forgiveness and good enough to make a positive difference is something that is even harder.  I don’t know why it has taken so long to try and put the past behind me, but it has.  Maybe this trip will allow me to put things into greater perspective and just let it go while still taking the lessons I have learned with me.  I guess it is true that life is not about just getting it right, but rather about living your life and realizing when you do something wrong and doing something about it. 

A friend of mine from high school once told me that if you take all the sticks out of your ass, you will have not backbone.  I never really knew just how true that is sometimes until recently (wow, it has taken me till the age of 24 to learn what a friend of mine said I high school? that’s a little pathetic. or maybe she was just beyond her time).  In trying to help Ben and Sky lead the team out here, I have had to ask people to do jobs when they are tired, or repeat jobs that weren’t always done as good as they could have been, just as I have been asked to do those things too.  It is just being a part of a team.   We try to work together in all situations.  But as I was friends with most of these people for years before we came out here, it has been hard sometimes to find a balance between being the VP (even though really here, titles mean nothing) and being the guy they knew in college.  I could easily try to be the total pushover and take all the sticks out of my ass and just totally go with the flow, in which case no one is better off.  Or I could try and find a middle ground and let the small things roll off my shoulder while trying to get everyone (including myself) to do the right thing.  But in doing so I find that sometimes I’m the pigeon and some days I’m the statue.

Well it is Friday night in Palm Coast, and now that the electric is more or less figured out, I think it’s about time I start reviewing the medical knowledge again since we will be leaving soon. Is it bad that I look forward to making time to read medical texts?