Decisions, Decisions
We just ticked off our first year of sailing full time. As I look back on the changes that took place over the last 365 days, I am amazed at how fortunate we were to make the decision to let go of the comfortable and familiar and launch a dream that had been percolating in the backs of our minds for a number of years. When we made the decision in April 2019, we didn’t know there was going to be a global pandemic that would upend society. We didn’t know homeschooling was going to be forced upon everyone. We didn’t know the economy would take a nosedive and that unemployment would skyrocket. We simply made a decision. However, there is something worth discussing as we look back, and by no small coincidence it is fear.
Fear associated with making even small decisions can be paralyzing. I remember driving with my Dad heading north on I95 somewhere near Kittery, Maine. I was home on leave from flight school in Pensacola, FL, and we were heading up to check some stuff out at the Kittery Trading Post. I am dating myself a bit here, but this happened to be a time when people still used paper maps and didn’t have a GPS-guided display giving them voice commands. There was some discussion about which exit we were supposed to take, and Dad, who was driving at 65mph, became flustered. You could feel the indecision in the way he was driving. I remember telling him that it didn’t matter which exit we took because if it ended being the wrong one we could always get back on the freeway and find the correct one. I was very nervous about getting into an accident, while he was solely focused on not making a wrong decision.
We had been learning about these exact moments in flight school, albeit in a different environment. Assess, decide, act…and do it quickly if you need to, but above all be decisive! A great deal of research has been dedicated to the debilitating effects of indecision, which can be far worse than a bad decision. In fact, we are still learning how it affects our brains, our guts, and our mental wellness. I’m no expert, but what I learned was that you can correct a bad decision, as long as you recognize it is bad and act quickly. Indecision, however, is paralyzing, and the amount of time you spend, either a few seconds or (in the case of trying to decide about sailing) a few years, can be exhausting and frustrating. But it goes beyond that into areas that can quickly erode health and mental faculties.
A lot of people talk about selling it all, quitting the rat race, and taking off on a bucket list adventure. Many don’t do it, however, because the indecision subordinates the dream to a state of paralysis based in large part on fear – fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of letting go, fear of the person looking back in the mirror. The sad part for me personally is that I wasted a lot of time since that day in the car with my Dad agonizing way too much over decisions. Over time, I began to forget or suppress the lessons I learned in flight school and as a Naval Flight Officer in the fleet. As I grew older and had a family of my own, I became more risk averse. Somewhere along the way I became too cautious, too deliberate, too dependent on reviews, opinions, and stories. I became paralyzed. OMG, I became my Dad!!
I remember the day…and the knot I had in my stomach…when I agreed to the sailing adventure. Fear ran rampant through my brain, and I had visions of monster waves and screaming winds. I remember timidly announcing our decision to friends and family using words like, “we are seriously thinking about buying a boat and taking the kids on an adventure.” Seriously thinking. Sounds like a line out of the movie “A Few Good Men.” I object! Overruled! I strenuously object! I’m SERIOUSLY thinking here people. OK, whatever that means. It was noncommittal to say that, and I felt like a weenie doing it. Looking back from the other side of the decision, the indecision is almost laughable. Everything turned out fine. It would have been a lot worse if we were still kicking the idea around and not acting on it. To be sure, there were some really uncomfortable moments, but discomfort is not a bad thing as I tell my kids from time to time.
Here’s the rub.
Nobody knows what tomorrow is going to bring, or that there is even going to be a tomorrow. The longer you wait, the less time you have. It’s that simple. Do or don’t do. Whatever it is that is stirring inside you deserves a decision. You can always regroup if your decision turns out to be the wrong one. At least you won’t be wasting any more time thinking about it.
One could argue that an extraordinary set of circumstances aligned to “prove” that we made the right decision, but that is purely reflective speculation and armchair quarterbacking. What unfolded in the first half of 2020 showed the decision we made in 2019 might not have been possible if we had waited. Instead of being locked out and wishing we had just gone for it, we found ourselves already living a lifestyle that was forced upon many who were unprepared for it.
Unemployed? Check! Cooped up 24/7 with each other? Check! Homeschooling? Check! Social distancing? Check! Living with the inconveniences? Check! We were way ahead of the curve on all of those things. No doubt COVID made some of those inconveniences even more inconvenient, but all in all there were far fewer disruptions to our lives than many back home experienced when the freakout started in late February. But we didn’t know any of this was going to happen, so don’t think for a second I am judging anyone else’s life and comparing it to ours.
At the end of July 2019, we were in the process of closing the purchase of Fearless. I remember the knots in my stomach (again). It was a big purchase for us. Like any other time in your life when you are about to hand over a bunch of money for something, it suddenly seemed like a terrifyingly bad idea. It was a gamble, too. We were taking a chance on a lifestyle neither of us had lived in the past. Sure, I had cruised for a week at a time on our family’s small monohull, but Andi and I had never done this as a couple. The kids had mixed emotions about it. Oh yeah, and we were buying a boat located in south Florida about the time when the Atlantic hurricane season was gearing up. We were on the clock – with the kids, with hurricanes, with the passage of our lives.
Five days after we closed the purchase we headed out of the Fort Pierce Inlet and pointed the boat north for Rhode Island and a six day offshore passage. A year and more than three thousand nautical miles of sailing later, we are glad we pushed through the hard stuff, battled through our fears, and actually did what we said we were going to do.
There is a life lesson in all of this that I hope our kids take into their futures. This hasn’t been easy, but the rewards have been many. COVID-19 put up a lot of barriers to the cruising lifestyle in the Caribbean where we have been since the start of 2020. Rightly so, all the island nations went into lockdown, and we no longer can just up and move from island to island without a lot of coordination and planning. But these are minor things…challenges we need to outthink. Anything worth doing is going to require prioritization, compromise, and hard work. That’s life. But more than anything, I want my children to remember these moments so that they are able to face their own futures with bold decisiveness. COVID or no COVID, this was all about making the decision. That’s it. That’s the hardest part. Everything that follows is merely life unfolding and you making adjustments.
I will tell you without hesitation that despite all the off ramps we could have taken we are so grateful that we pushed through the fear and went for it. The indecision was killing me! And, now that we are a year into this I can tell you with complete confidence that nobody in the cruising community is watching YouTube videos of people driving their kids to soccer practice or shopping at Walmart. Life is meant to be lived. Don’t let fear hold you back.