Imagine that you’ve decided to move onto a boat.  You don’t want to rent a storage unit, but you can leave a few boxes of priceless (to you) items with a relative to store in an attic.  Everything else has to go unless it’s coming on the boat.  Look around where you live.  Look at all of the furniture, the television, the desktop computer, the pictures on the wall.  It all has to go.  Now look again.  Notice all of the things that you didn’t even see the first time you looked around.  The floor lamps.  The end tables.  The shoe rack.  The umbrella stand.  The drying rack.  Yep.  That has to go too.  How in the world are you going to pull this off?

This is what we repeatedly asked ourselves in the weeks leading up to our move.  In fact, until a few days before we actually left, I wasn’t so sure that we COULD get rid of it all.  When we sold the house in February of last year, we rented a dumpster and got rid of a ton of stuff.  Somehow we still managed to have what felt like a half-ton of stuff.  I can’t imagine what this would have been like if we hadn’t already downsized once.

We sold things on CraigsList and Facebook.  I offered items to people at work.  The Goodwill employees practically knew our names.  We repeatedly filled the trash barrels.  Each day we put items on the curb.  And slowly but surely, we managed to get rid of it.  I knew we were making real progress when the rooms in the apartment began to have that distinctive empty room echo when we talked.

I lean towards minimalism so overall I really enjoyed getting rid of 99% of our stuff.  I know that some people have found similar processes difficult, but I thought it was incredibly freeing.  There is something to be said about being intentional about every single item you own.  We touched everything and made a decision whether to bring it with us or not.  Now, Pegu Club doesn’t have a thing on her that is superfluous or that doesn’t have a purpose – even if the purpose is simply to bring us joy.  Honestly, it’s the only way to make it work on a 30′ boat, but someday when we swallow the anchor we’ll definitely continue living like this.  It reminds me of when I packed everything I owned into my car and drove across the country.  It felt great then.  It feels even better now.

About two weeks into my leave I looked at Jeff and said, “It’s interesting.  Nothing has changed.  You’re still sick, dad is still dead, but I feel So. Much. Better.”  There it was.  Incontrovertible proof.  It was the job.

I’ve worked as a municipal attorney for just over thirteen years.  The people I work with are great, but the work itself hasn’t been enjoyable for a number of years now.  It’s not that it’s a bad job.  Far from it.  I’m just bored.  I’m not passionate about it, and stepping away made it clear that I’ve been burned out for a very long time.

My dad was the Director of Communications for the Southern California Golf Association and a classic musical critic for Southern California newspaper publications.  After he died it was clear that his passion had an effect on many people.  He lived his life enjoying what he was doing, and I want to do the same thing.

What do I enjoy?  Spending time with Jeff.  Being outdoors.  Being on the water.  Being warm.  Wearing shorts and a t-shirt.  Being active.

What am I doing?  Wearing business casual clothes while sitting behind a desk in an office forty hours a week in a place that’s too cold for my taste for six months of every year.

So I quit.

Tomorrow I go back to work until Friday, August 3rd.  After that I’ll work part-time (Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday) if my boss needs me to, but only until Tuesday, September 4th.  At that point my lawyer days will be behind me.

What are we going to do?  Well, Jeff has improved enough over the past six months that his cardiologist said if he continues to do so we should leave in September as we had planned (flying or driving back for appointments every three months).  So we’re operating under the assumption that we’re cutting the docklines on September 5th.  We’re going to move out of the apartment and onto the boat at the end of July, and I’ll commute from Shenny for those last few weeks of work.  What if we can’t go in September?  We’ll find a studio apartment on the shoreline for six months and take off in the spring instead.

What am I going to do for work?  At the moment, nothing.  We’ve saved up a lot of money over the past few years as we’ve been preparing to leave.  If we have to stay for the winter I’ll probably pick up some part-time work (because why not?), but not in an office.  I’ll be perfectly content waitressing, bartending, working in a grocery store, whatever, for the winter.

I’d like to get my USCG Master Captain’s license, and if we are able to leave in the fall I’ll have enough sea time to be able to do that within the year.  That way if I do decide to go back to work in the future or we want to pick up some extra cash, I can do something within the marine industry – work as a boat captain, a launch operator, for Tow Boat, something like that.  I’ll be outside, on the water, warm, active, and wearing shorts and a t-shirt.  I’ll be doing something I’m passionate about.  And that’s all that matters.

Am I nervous about leaving a well-paying, full-time job with excellent benefits and a pension?  Hell yes!  But I know in my core that it’s the right thing to do.  I’ve taken risks in the past and I’ve always made it work out.  This time will be no different.

I read a quote from John Burroughs a few weeks ago that has stuck with me:  Leap and the net will appear.  I’ve leapt – and it feels so good.

This has been a really hard offseason for me.  It’s typically difficult in that I hate winter with a white-hot passion and I hate not being on the boat, but this one has definitely been the worst.  Jeff came really close to dying during the holidays (and ended up with a heart failure diagnosis which has been life changing for both of us), I sank into a depression (which I tried to white-knuckle for a few months before finally listening to my friends and therapist and starting Lexapro), and then my father (who inspired me to start the blog and commented on virtually all of my blog posts) passed away a few weeks ago after being diagnosed with a rare, aggressive cancer last summer.  Less important, but still a significant factor for me, is that winter rolled in with a vengeance in January, was slow to go away, and we’ve had cloudy, rainy, and below normal temperatures for several months now.  Needless to say (and obviously based on the lack of posts), the blog has taken a back seat.

But this post isn’t all gloom and doom.  At this point Pegu Club is finally in the water.  She still needs her mast stepped and a sea trial on the engine, but I’m keeping every finger crossed that next weekend we’ll be taking her back to Shenny to finally, FINALLY, start our season.  I’m still struggling with everything that’s been happening so after next week I’m taking a leave of absence from work for a month (maybe longer) to try to clear my head.  Boat therapy is definitely in order so expect much more activity on the blog from this point forward.

So despite everything, what did we manage to accomplish over the past several months? Well, we put new wires in the mast (although we still have to finish the terminals) and installed the new B&G wind instrument; installed the new B&G transducer; finished hooking up the new electric panel which included new heat shrink terminals at the end of all of the wires and running cables to the battery selector switch; reinstalled the galley cabinet that was removed to install the engine; ran new bilge hoses for the electric and manual bilge; finally installed a new backing plate for the electric bilge so it won’t fall over anymore; and we put two coats of bottom paint on to get Pegu Club ready for the season.  Jeff also started varnishing the hatch boards and I started making a new mainsail cover (which has stalled until the mast is stepped).

It doesn’t sound like much, but it wasn’t until the last month or so that Jeff has been able to spend more than a few hours working on the boat (and climbing the ladder), so we actually did pretty well under the circumstances.  Here’s hoping that things will start looking up and we’ll have a great season – once we can finally get it started!