Vacationland

I live in vacationland. It's beautiful here. But, the problem is: Everyone who comes to visit...is on vacation. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that people vacation in Maine. Both Groom and I receive paychecks from the tourism industry--his checks are largely from the ski industry and the fishing industry while mine come in through the boating industry. I do work at a ski resort, but...well...how do I put this so it doesn't make me seem ungrateful.... let me put it this way... I'm not there for the money.

This week sailed by so I apologize for being silent. I received a very large proofreading job with a quick turnaround. The job required no creative thinking and tapped into the detail-oriented side of my brain--much the way a game of Memory or a jigsaw puzzle works the part of your head that needs to keep the pieces straight. I wasn't in a writing frame of mind.

And that's where I stand. Very little actual physical activity but I have been sticking with local food. I'll mow the lawn this afternoon, but otherwise I'm still squishy and soft with just a hint of strength.

I am on week five, I think, of people on vacation calling me up and asking me why I'm not joining them for dinner or meeting them at the beach. It kills me. If I take a day off from work, I have to make it up that evening or the next day. If I take a week off from work, I lose a week's pay. Sometimes, I get an accidental vacation, which is nice, but the weeks following that vacation, I'm living on ramen noodles. (Well, that's an exaggeration, but you know what I mean.) In short, I live project to project, not day to day, so my happy hour comes at odd times, not necessarily at 5:00 on Friday.

I did take a break this week. I won't say it was a forced break, but it was a break I wouldn't have taken had it not been my friend's birthday and had she not asked if she could just come over and spend the night. As a freelance editor, writer, proofreader, and copy writer, my time is weird. People have this idea that freelancer's can come and go as they please, and it's true for the most part. But, my evenings are spent working and my weekends are eaten up by deadlines.

this

Tuesday night, my friend came up for dinner (cod that Groom had caught off the mouth of the Kennebec) and, over supper, Groom and Friend discussed going out in the boat all morning on Wednesday. I'll admit I was envious, but I needed to get some work done. At around noon on Wednesday, however, Groom texted me. "Wanna go for a boat ride?"

became this

My immediate answer was no. No. No nonononononononoooooo.....

Fuck it. Yes.

While Groom chatted with Friend about how tide and current manipulate the water and as he handed the helm over to her (she was charmingly nervous), I slid back on the bow of the boat and looked up at the sky. I was looking for faces in the clouds (that sounds like a terrible metaphor; I was literally trying to make out faces in the clouds)--something I used to do when I was a kid. I would lean back on the lawn and stare at the clouds while my mother sat inside at the kitchen table drinking coffee and chatting with her mother or sometimes the local priest. This past Wednesday, as I looked for those faces, my mind went completely blank for the first time in a long time. It was like someone pulled the plug.

vacation

Even though a Tuesday night of dinner and drinks followed by a Wednesday relaxing on the water had been my gift to Friend for her 40th birthday, I feel like I should be thanking her. She has been on the road a lot working on a project that, I discovered this week, she has been working on for over two years, and she needed to be with family and friends--the kinds of family and friends who know you, who can almost read your mind, and for whom you do not need to force charm or humor or insight. The kinds of friends you don't need to explore anymore; you already know them.

I didn't realize how much I needed the same thing.

Speaking of friends, you should totally check out her blog and her travels at Are You Really My Friend? The Facebook Portrait Project, in which she is setting out to take portraits of all her Facebook friends. What started out as a fun little way to travel around and take her friends' portraits has become a journey into virtual friends' homes, a journey of exploring the lives of acquaintances, a journey of self discovery, and a journey to define the true nature of friendship. For me as a writer, that journey takes a backseat to the images--even though I do enjoy the natural light and the poses that people choose--I find the stories most interesting.

Ugh. God. I am so sorry I wrote "journey" that many times, but I don't know another way to say it. I'll admit my post here about "real" friends seems like a commentary on her vision, and I guess in some ways it is. I see nothing wrong with exploring other people's worlds as a way to remind yourself that you still always have friends at home.

This is how I get when I'm wiped out. It's a little much, right? Just check out the blog.

Oh, and you know how I wrote, "I slid back on the bow..." and "I would lean back on the lawn..." up above? That's because I'm way too lazy to look up whether it should be "lay" or "lie," so I wrote around it.

Cheers.