A better life

What we needed was some ocean time for respite. We scooped up the dog and the laptop and fled to Catalina on our little 28' Hunter sailboat.  This is our happy place, the place we always retreat to when we need a little elbow room in L.A.

With the phone tethering turned on the laptop is pretty quick. I am able to work quite well with the internet connection from the boat.  He does the cooking while I work, then we clean up together and relax on the deck together. Tonight's entertainment: the dinghy dock is full. The Marina had us park pretty close so we have a front-row seat. People are arriving from an afternoon at the bar, trying to find their dinghies in the growing dark, others are jockeying their way in. It's pandemonium. Delicious. We sip our cocktails and revel in the insanity, not even attempting to hide our glee at the mayhem.

Ahhhhh. This is the life.

Wait - this is THE life.  Why are we doing anything else?

That afternoon, while sitting on our little boat in Two Harbors on Catalina it all became so clear.  We live in harmony on our boat.  When things break or don't go as planned we work together to resolve them. We are in sync.

At our house we are always struggling against one another for resources and time. Mostly time.  This is not new knowledge, we've noticed this before, but owning a house and struggling to keep it filled is the life we're supposed to be living, right? Working to the point of exhaustion all week to collapse gratefully in bed in a heap, living for ourselves on the weekends not otherwise gobbled up by house chores or overtime, doing it again and again and trying to stay positive by remaining focused instead on the measly two weeks of annual vacation the corporation allows?

What if we do something else instead? Can we build a life we don't need to plan a vacation to get away from? Can we agree on what that would look like?

We start the debate.