7 Days

The last vacation I went on, that was more than a 3 day venture, was to Disney World the summer I turned 9. 18 years later, I finally take another week long vaca, again to Florida. We stayed in a condo on the beach (when I say we, I mean my dad, step-mom, 11 yr old brother and 6 year old sister...23 yo brother opted not to go) and I woke up every morning to the sound of the ocean.

This picture is of me on the beach after a storm. It was beautiful-the beach was all but deserted, sea creatures of all kinds washing up in the shallow water along the shoreline,and if I looked out just right, keeping the view of hotels scattered up and down the coast out of eyesight, and just focusing on the vacant beach and vast ocean, it was like my own private paradise.

I was only gone a week but it felt in ways much longer. Maybe because I didn't have my computer and was limited on using my cell phone, maybe because something about water has always made me a bit more introspective, maybe because Saturday I turned another year older, but something inside of me seemed to change in those short 7 days. When I got back home, I felt a bit empty inside. I return to a job that doesn't satisfy, friends whom I love but are very much going on different courses than I in their lives, and that feeling I forgot until the moment we hit the beach: How small of a fraction of the world I live in here.

When I took that trip 18 years ago, we had stopped at the beach, and I remember feeling tiny against the backdrop of the sea. I'm older, I'm bigger, but still got that same feeling when I stood against it this time. And that realization that it is a big, big world. One with possibilities. One with opportunity for more than what I live here. I hope that I can somehow harness this feeling into something productive, but fear that with the return to work tomorrow, it will chisel away at my soul once more, and I will regress back to the zombie I was before I left.....