Time tread
Latterly battling a major case of the blues, I’m not helped by what locals refer to as “island time,” a peculiar warp-mode prevalent to Victoria. It eats initiative, lets responses (feedback) fall into the black hole of never-never-land, and generally bogs down any and all projects. The other day in the locker room, I overheard a young woman tell her friend that in Victoria we tread water. The implication was – and she spoke from experience, having worked in Asia and on The Mainland – that in other places all that activity of moving your legs about actually gets you somewhere.
Ok, that’s my grumpy mood in a nutshell. I’m treading water, too. It feels more and more like a really dumb thing to do.
In other news, I am catching up on a couple of things, including posting my FOCUS articles to my Scribd.com page. More on that later.
Perhaps I’ve been treading water as well, but I guess it’s all relative. We are all our own worst critics..
Comment by Davin Greenwell — April 13, 2009 #
I know what you mean. It also exists in Whistler, I have now learned, which is immensely frustrating, given that I work in a field that reminds me everyday that we have no time to waste.
Comment by Naomi — April 13, 2009 #
Treading water develops great leg muscles and allows one time to think and look around. Time which otherwise may have been taken up by navigating the spining that is life anywhere else but the Island.
Yes, I am new to Island life!
Cheers,
LA:)
Comment by Laura A. — April 13, 2009 #
@ Laura: Thanks for the comment, and you’re right, it is about perspective. I’m usually l’il Ms Optimism, but sometimes even I get tired of banging my head on the wall… 😉
.
@ Naomi: Interesting re. Whistler. Is it the “resort” mentality, I wonder? Or something Canadian? I moved back to Victoria/ Vancouver after nearly 20 years in Boston, so I’m always calibrating some US-Canada differences, realizing that many aspects of business and *local* government allow for more nimble action in US, but maybe it’s also an East Coast / West Coast difference, and a knowledge-center vs resort-center difference? Or maybe it’s actually what a woo-woo acquaintance of mine thinks it is: invisible energy vectors deep down in the earth, expressed through power points around Vancouver Island (cue the Twilight Zone music, haha…).
.
@ Davin: You got that right (“We are all our own worst critics”). You have nothing to beat yourself up for, though, and you’re not treading water!
.
I moved back here in part to get off the treadmill “back East,” but most especially because I love the West Coast and I believed that the internet would mitigate some of our island isolation. And I think (I know!) it does. Interestingly, I’ve come across a whole lot of younger people who manage to do really well, all the while based in Victoria, because instead of treading water, they’re floating (in the cloud, the computing cloud), making a living and doing it well.
.
It’s a bit different for me, insofar as I’m also quite focused on the local/ the specific (which is what gets things all snarled up); I’m at that well-into-mid-life crisis, where physical changes like aging become increasingly hard to ignore, even as you (I!) realize you’ve spent the past 10 years doing this and that but not working within the career field you ostensibly trained in, so you’re really out of all the traditional loops – and now you’re older, too! – and your kids are on the verge of being fully fledged (yay!), but (see previous point), you realize you just spent the last 10 years doing for them and not doing for yourself, and so you ask, ‘now what?’ – and, how could I forget this one? – the economy has gone into the toilet and what you thought was the fallback after all that self-denial and having no debt was for nothing, and you would have been richer in experience had you taken that money and spent it before what you invested it in tanked.
.
So, I guess my calling treading water a “dumb” thing to do is informed by all those feelings. I’ve been a “good girl” since moving back here (nearly 7 years ago), and either I kick some serious ass pretty soon, or I’ll just f*cking combust. If you hear a loud explosion coming from the edge of downtown near Fairfield/ Rockland, that’ll be me.
.
PS: Thanks for all your comments – means a lot! 😉
Comment by Yule — April 13, 2009 #