Act III:The Resort

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once

Albert Einstein

Often, time moves fast. Often, time moves slow. Time is a very relative thing, you know. Albert Einstein once gave this analogy:  Put your hand on a hot stove for an hour and time will move very slow. Talk to a pretty girl for an hour and time will move very fast.

Now, Einstein didn’t say this, but I think he could’ve: On rare occasions time will move fast and slow simultaneously. Hmm. At this moment, I am experiencing one of those rare occasions. We were initially scheduled to close on the resort in June. That got moved back to mid-August. That got moved back to mid-September. And now, rather suddenly, we are closing August 17—two weeks from today. Holy shit!

I find myself talking to a pretty girl while simultaneously having my hand planted firmly on a hot stove.

Now you existentialists out there will say, just focus on the pretty girl. It’s just mind over matter after all. Yes…that’s fine and true to a point, but if I don’t put some attention on that hot stove, my hand will end up being a potato chip.

We are close to the finish line and things had slowed down for Laurie and me. We have the last 3 houses we need to sell under contract, and although there is still much work to do to get them closed (thanks to nervous first-time buyers, home inspections, appraisals), we’re done displacing renters, cleaning, fixing, and renovating in order to market the houses. And just in time I believe. If my wife had to clean one more disgusting toilet she might revolt.

We had taken to sitting on the back porch in the evening talking about important resort things like tropical drink recipes, smoothies, sailboats—fun stuff.  We had done very little of that the last 8 months as we grinded along and we found ourselves quickly getting our excitement and enthusiasm back. When the closing got pushed back into September, it gave us time to take a deep breath—relax a little. Then, whammo, straight back to the hot stove. Suddenly, in two weeks we have a solid closing date and we are making airplane reservations to Honduras and Tegucigalpa for the sole purpose of finally making the resort ours.

So like I said:  Holy shit!

Okay, so if you can correctly say Tegucigalpa 3 times real fast your first beer at the resort is free

Clearwater Paradise Resort Management

Aging is a funny thing. I always considered myself to be an adventurous person. I’ve done my share of “unusual things,” but most of that was back when I was younger. As I’ve aged, I have become less and less adventurous and I’m not sure why.  So this new adventure has made my stomach upset for a while.

And what exactly is it that has me tied up in knots?

I’m very aware that at the age of 64 there are things that I physically cannot do that I once could. Oddly, that doesn’t bother me. What bothers me are the things that I always wanted to do that I no longer want to do. Does that make sense? For example, I no longer have any desire to back-pack across Europe. I’m guessing if you’re around my age it makes sense.

We have all heard someone say, “I want to retire young enough (or I want to get my kids grown early enough) that I can do X, Y, and Z.” Maybe the correct way of saying that should be, “I want to retire young while I still want to do X, Y, and Z. (of course, doing or not doing X, Y, or Z has nothing to do with the age of our kids or being retired but that’s another whole conversation.)

I’m not exactly sure where that “want” goes, or why. I suspect it might have something to do with the fact we spend all our adult life trying to create security. Saving for retirement, buying a house in a safe neighborhood, having car insurance, health insurance, home insurance, life insurance. We need an emergency fund, locks on our doors, security cameras. And, this is a biggie, we want to be “comfortable.”

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in my (very comfortable) Lazyboy. For some crazy reason I just heard my wife exclaim from the back porch, “It’s going to get real, really quick!” Yes indeed, as my good friend Steve likes to say.

And, oh my goodness, my Lazyboy is comfortable! And I should know; I spend enough time sitting in it. Maybe security comes first, then comfort, but it seems to me that most of the things I no longer want to do fit into the category of comfort. Things like camping, sleeping in strange beds, riding a rollercoaster 8 times in a row, staying out late partying, traveling in boats without cushions are all not as appealing as they once were. I want to have a great adventure sitting here in my Lazyboy!

I really, really hate admitting to myself that I’ve spent most of my adult life focused on creating security and comfort. I never intended that to be my life’s purpose. I’m an adventurer, a risk-taker. Hell, I’m…evolved, I’m blah, blah, blah. Yet here I am! It snuck up on me one day at a time, one week at a time, one month, one year—one decade at a time. It’s making me sick just writing this.

We seek security, but since security is a myth, we end up with complacency

Anonymous

Everyone of my generation remembers Saturday’s Wide World of Sports on TV. And everyone remembers the one great line from the intro:  The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat!

We go to untold lengths to avoid the agony of defeat. Oh, how we can not tolerate that agony of defeat. I’ve had several dogs die of old age, and every time I’m heartbroken. Dogs come into our lives, make us love them and then don’t stay around long enough. Every time I’ve lost a dog I tell myself no more dogs.  I can’t do this. Eventually I get another dog because I realize 10-12 years of a dog’s love and companionship is more than worth the heartbreak at the end.

But we spend our lives trying to avoid that agony. Call it what you want:  Fear of failure, fear of financial ruin, fear of being ridiculed, fear of rejection, fear of being mugged by a roving band of prostitutes (that’s a story for another time). We work to avoid at all costs the emotions caused by that agony of defeat. We design our lives to avoid it.

In designing our lives to avoid this agony of defeat, we also design our lives to avoid the thrill of victory. Yes, you cannot have one without the other, and I really miss that thrill of victory. I miss the highs that I’ve inadvertently wiped out with the lows. Scientific studies have been done on how much children laugh compared to adults. The disparity is both astonishing and depressing. I remember in college, a friend and I would sometimes get into an inappropriate, public laughing fit over something silly. The more we tried to stop laughing, the harder we laughed. We laugh so hard our stomachs hurt. I miss that.

I don’t like soccer–for one simple reason. I don’t like ties. More than once I’ve gone to a soccer match, cheered, booed–all that good stuff just to leave feeling incomplete because the result was a tie. I would rather see my team lose than tie.

Tom Smith

During my journey as a COVID long-hauler, several people have suggested anti-depressants. No, I tell them. It seems to me if you take pills to eliminate or lessen the depression (the lows), you also eliminate the highs. I know the highs have been far and few between, but I want them. Totally living in that middle-ground seems rather yucky—as in no thanks. And yet, hasn’t that been what I’ve done with most of my adult life? Haven’t I designed it to live in the yucky middle-ground?

How are you? Fine. How’s the family? Fine. How’s work? Fine. How’s the weather? Fine. The word “fine” is like the word “mild.” Local weather forecasters have taken to use the term mild in their forecasts a lot. Just what exactly does mild mean? Well, just what exactly does the word “fine” mean?

So, here we are!

“Hi Tom, how are you?”

“How am I?  Well…I have periods of extreme anxiety and fear. I am often filled with disbelief, and I wonder if I’ve gone off the deep end. Then, I have periods of uncontrollable excitement where I feel I might jump right out of my skin—imagine that at 64! And sometimes I just want to crawl underneath the covers and stay there. The weirdest part, however, is there are moments amid everything where I might let out a giggle.”

“Oh…Ah…wow…maybe you should go see someone…you know, a doctor. Maybe they can figure out the cause and give you something for that.”

“I know the cause:  In 14 freakin’ days I will own a resort on a small island in the Caribbean!”

[if you’re wanting to hear about Rauls Tacos you gotta wait–sorry]

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