Making a run

We are heading back down to deep water off Miami. It's a long run, giving me lots of time to read and reflect. I'm thinking about what I'm going to do when I get my MMD card as an ordinary seaman. I watched the large cargo ships move in and out of Savannah's port, wondering where they are going and what they are carrying. It's easy to get the wanderlust just thinking about that. But it's a different thing to carry it out and give up on a home life and all that it has to offer.

I am missing home a little today. It seems to happen when I'm bored from lack of activity. So far, we've just been running south and won't be doing much in the way of data collection until later tonight. I really like physical work when I'm on ship. It keeps me from thinking too much about the things and people that I miss.

It's easy to leave everything behind out here. The "geographic" change is a pleasant one but my mind also goes to all the things that I'll have to catch up on when I next get back to work on land. I've also got to start thinking more about my first anniversary in Al-Anon. How do I put the story together? I'd like to start at where I am now and then go back to where I was a year ago and the events that got me to both places. I don't necessarily want this to be a linear story. I want it to have the dimensions that portray all the complexity and also humor. I don't like continuous sob stories or the "poor me" saga. Looking back on things, there is a lot of room for humor and there are a lot of happy times that occurred. Not everything has been bad.

I was wondering how you told your story. I don't want to read from a sheet of paper. Just have it come straight from my heart. It's the only way that I know how to do anything.