Adventures Needed

It occurred to me that my blog theme is being at sea... the concept of where you're just floating around, waiting to see where you go and what gets washed up on shore with you. Yet, I can't for the life of you tell you why I did this. When my friend was helping me set up my blog she wanted to know what to call it... and that's literally the 1st thing that came to mind... thoughts from afar, as though I was at sea, looking for the shore.

Ironically 7yrs later, I have joined the UofM Sailing Club. This too was a snap decision. My friend told me about it on like a Thursday about a month ago, and then in that moment, I realized I should join. Friday while he and I were at lunch w/Shaun, I told him I wanted to do it. And Saturday we were out at the club. The following week I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into as my friend and I began to practice knot tying and I totally panicked. "Ummm," I'm thinking to myself as my friend, and now my roommate are casually picking up all these knots from a You Tube video and I'm left with some sort of twisted piece of rope I'm not sure will come undone. "Maybe I should quit the sailing club, this was a dumb idea, I'm not a sailor!" These were my second thoughts as I have now switched to be one-on-one tutored by my roommate on how to tie these knots. "I can't believe I think I can do this." Another thought after failing my 1st "Knots Test." And this does not include the myriad of thoughts swirling about physics... how much I hate it, why would I possibly need to know any of it to sail, and aren't we just supposed to be having fun here?! Fun does not include math people!

So then comes this past Saturday. My friend is out of state visiting family, so I had to go it alone. You know alert I am in the morning, and despite him loaning me his GPS to get me there, I still got lost. (Somehow I chose the wrong "Favorites" address... which luckily was right by I-94.) Yet, even more surprising is that I arrived 10mins early! (Seriously like a record...) So here I am, 2nd person there, and the Vice Commadore tells me to go rig a boat. "Oh sure, no problem, yeah, umm, where are the sails? I need a what? A rudder? Where's that? Oh yeah, of course right in front of me... because I didn't even know what I was looking for.) So of course, I have done no reading in my lil sailing book; nor have I seen anyone rig a boat before in my life. Well, here we go. So the skipper stands on the dock (above me) coaching me how to rig this boat. Then I got out for a sailing lesson with this super competitive and talkative chick. (I was so glad I had eased into my morning by this point.) All is well, so then I offer to rig another boat. This time however, I'm given no instruction and just left to my own devices. So I'm talking to God, asking Him how I just got myself into rigging a boat by myself and praying that no one dies or is injured due to this and He reminds me things to do. So I only forgot 4 things from getting the sails to docking and raising the sails... not bad.

So I'm rushing home to shower for my graduation party (which I was exactly on time for!) and God asks me, "Why do you think you can't do anything?" Hmm, well, umm, hmmm. So then I start to realize all these things God is teaching me through the Sailing Club. I'm reminded that I enjoy being challenged. I'm completely out of my comfort zone and hate talking to strangers. With practice, I can tie knots... and I passed my test. And I might even be capable of learning a small amount of physics too. God was also teaching me about competition in a few ways. Like I realized if I was competitive (or perhaps a "J") I would actually feel compelled to get things checked off my ratings list, which I really don't. (The ratings list is the what qualifies you to take a boat out by yourself, but I don't want to go by myself...) And perhaps part of the reason I don't like competition is I don't feel competent. Which is also the reason it seems that I'm hyper-apologetic. I'm apologizing to you for my incompetence so you won't get mad and leave me. How's that for a revelation. So perhaps I don't push myself like I could.

So all that to say (which I realize was a lot) brings me to my title. Another friend on Friday said he was worried about me and thinks I'm longing for adventure, but searching for it in the wrong places. I had never considered myself an adventurous person, but maybe I am after all. So with this in mind, I can get more excited about checking things off my ratings list, because then I will be able to skipper a boat and be at sea :)