Letting Go

  The definition of "unmoor" is to release the moorings of a vessel. I didn't know that until today, but it's what we have been in the process of doing over the last few months.

  My last blog mentioned hanging some of our pictures on the walls of Swing Set. We only have room for a hundred of them or so, but I found out that in our files there are nearly 10,000 of them. Obviously, we don't have room for all of them, and naturally, we wouldn't want to have room for all of them. They are not all pictures we'd want to keep anyway.

  I have scanned all of our photos and will begin scanning all of our documents to file on the computer. So what if the boat sinks or burns and we lose the computer? The solution has come in the way of a program called Mozy. We chose to install MozyHome on our desktop. I'm not giving a tutorial here, or a recommendation, but just some simple facts. For 50GB of memory on one computer, with a two year sign up, it amounts to about $5 per month. We'll not need that much memory, but we can add 20GB for another $2 per month if we do.

  This way, we can access our account from any computer with our password and restore our photos and documents should we have a failure. We do have a backup hard drive, but should we have a catastrophic event, the external hard drive would be ruined along with the computer. This has provided some peace of mind for us.

  I may have mentioned our plans to destroy all of the actual photos by virtue of an occasional beach party with campfire. We figure that a nice fire surrounded by us and even some guests on a secluded beach somewhere, add a cooler of cold ones, and we'd have the makings of a great last photo viewing session before we toss 'em in the flames for eternity.

  We had one of these small events at the Duck Club last fall. I make no bones about it; it's very hard to do. But we still have the photos backed up if we ever want to look at them again, but the truth is, we never opened the albums anyway for years. We even had our wedding album unpacked the other night but I don't think we even opened it.

  The reality is that we are learning to "let go", to "unmoor" ourselves from our current lives to an extent. Think of the things you have in your possession somewhere that you haven't touched or seen in years; in ten years, or even more. What good is it? I've already given away most of the memorabilia from nearly 33 years at my job. No, it wasn't easy, but people that I care about have the stuff, and if I'm lucky, once in a while they'll see it and think of us. Without cussing.

  Just letting go of a job I really loved for so many years did not come easy. Rosie will soon do the same. Especially in this economy, who can even think of quitting two sources of income? Two good ones, to boot. But we can't live our dream if we didn't do this, right? We aren't totally irresponsible: we've secured a good retirement income, at least for being live aboards. Fuel costs are gonna hurt, but higher costs just mean more time on the hook. "Please", says Bre'r Rabbit, "don't throw me inna that briar patch." If you don't get that last reference, ask me about it some time.

  Just this morning I cleaned out a cabinet full of videos and home movies. Some of the home movies were on VHS, transferred years ago from 8mm film, some of which were as old as me. My dad was a big movie taker. Everywhere we went he had his old Bell and Howell camera going. I used to view those movies when I was younger but we might have looked at them twice in the last 35 years. Those tapes and some recent ones are sitting right now in our trash dumpster where we live. The images on those films are ingrained in our minds, and the people in them are in are hearts. If they fade from those places, we won't know who they are anyway, no matter much we stare at their pictures. All I ever do when I reminisce is get sad more than be happy, so why do it?

  I mean, if you're seeing pictures of people who are gone, you're sad because they are gone. If the memory is a happy one, then you're sad because those time are over, never to be duplicated again, no matter how hard you might try. Even getting together to talk about old times only goes so far; I'm beginning to not see the point in it. 

  This is a big commitment on our part, but we are only hedging our bets a little by providing some backup to our computer by installing this Mozy program. Pretty scary, and not for everybody, but no one is about to build a museum or library to house our old junk, and why would they? George W. Bush has a presidential library, and look at what a waste that is. :)