Fuses.

I have been meaning to post an entry myself for ages. I thought of so many great, funny and sharp things to say that would blow Seb's writing right out of the water, but I have been so tied up with other shit that I have forgotten most of it so you are stuck with this; a thoughtful piece according to me, B:

Funny isn’t it that whilst the world is full of people suffering hunger and war that our own problems seem bigger than any of these and we just can’t seem to overcome them. Striving for a dream and an unusual lifestyle is hard graft. I don’t mean just tough going I mean soul destroying, exhausting and bank breaking graft. Funny how a project that starts as a dream together can pull you apart and together at the same time and so often that you feel like a pushme-pullyou. How do you balance working to earn money, finding time to work on the thing that is costing the money and working on the career you hope to have established by the time the thing is finished?
Well it is October again, I say that with feeling as if you look back in the archives you will see that it was around this time of year when everything went tits up last time and so here it is again- no money, no time, too much work on and now an impeding forced period of rest due to surgery (I’m due to have horrid bone crunching on dodgy feet, nothing life threatening). All I can say is… oh fuck. Whilst I am struggling to reconcile the need to work on the horses that were due to be sold (and therefore lessen the workload) with trying to work on the boat all before the impeding hospital date, Seb is going mad. I don’t mean in the need to be committed sense but in the same way as an amplifier…Seb goes all the way up to 12 but his fuses blow at 11. He is struggling to stop panicking, worry keeps him awake- where to moor her, what about the timber, what about the paint etc etc. So worried about the bigger picture that he just can’t get on with the job in hand or should I say thing things we can get on with. It is so hard for both of us to be living through the weeks that we should have been preparing to launch but not being able to and at the same time staring down the barrel of another freezing winter….
I was looking at the (gorgeous) aft cabin timber structure the other day and thinking that it pretty much summed up my life at the moment- a giant game of Jenga. One false move or one crucial piece pulled out and..JENGA! All I can say is thank fuck for the clamps of friends and family that are holding our fragile structure together.
If anyone reads this and is thinking of undertaking anything similar, be it a house, a boat or simply relocating to a new place be prepared for it to take 5 times longer than you think and to consider carefully, not in the brave ‘we can do it’ sense but really be critical- can I do this, can we and will we survive?
War leaves scars and so does being hungry, whether that’s for food, for love or for a life you dream of. Make damn sure you can survive but also that you can heal.
The most valuable lesson I have learned so far is that it takes more strength to admit defeat when you are broken, to cry, to stay positive when bitter cynicism stands in the way and do all of this together without blame or criticism. That is harder than anything an angle grinder or a cold winter can throw.