What do I have in common with a gelatinous blue zooplankton?
Photo credit: Scripps Institute of Oceanography.
Even in land-locked, center-of-the-continent Minnesota, I read of things washing up on the coasts’ beaches. Animal life, wrecks, and if I remember correctly, human feet still in shoes a few years ago.
There’s some nightmare for you…
But today I ran across this from NatGeo: Velella Velella, or “By-the-Wind Sailors”.
They are…odd AF. Phylum Cnidaria, they seem like something out of science fiction (which makes them cooler, to me anyway). They are related to jellyfish, and are gelatinous, many -organism -working -together zooplankton that have been washed up by the gazillions on west coast beaches.
And I guess they might…sting.
But they sure are pretty! Even if it can’t decide if it’s *animal or vegetable (to be fair, neither can I sometimes…). Plankton are decidedly…weird. In a good way.
These creatures can’t locomotor (is that a verb? I’m using it as a verb. Sue me) on their own, so they drift along on the current. And when the current ends and the beach starts, I guess that’s their final stop, pull the cord, mind the gap.
I’m feeling an affinity with V. Velella here; far too often in my life, I, too, have just kind of drifted in indecision or fear or lack of motivation. I think most people have phases like this. I think I’ve had more than a phase or two–I might even say it was a way of life. Or a way of not-deciding-life.
Rather diminished mental health when young was likely the cause for the first time apathy and fear and self-loathing allowed me to waft with the air currents any which way they blew (not that V. Velella are self-loathing; I’m unsure if they’re even self-aware, which is NOT something I’ve ever suffered. I’d give anything to get out of my head once in a while…).
I did all the things–went to K-12 school (torture and mostly awful) with a miminum of effort (my brain does “school” well as that’s how it’s wired), was told I had to go to college by my parents (Mom who took night and summer classes for 20 years to get a degree while teaching full-time country school, and Dad who had to drop out at age 16 to help the family in 1939, both of whom drilled “college” into my brain since I joined them), and I just had no idea what I wanted to do. Looking at the future was a big blank, and I was just shocked to still be alive at age 18.
I applied to exactly ONE school, St. Cloud State, a known party school at the time and where Mom had gone. I honestly didn’t care. I saw nothing ahead of me.
I wafted through college, making Dean’s List the first year (again, I have a “school” brain and generals weren’t hard, and I was miserable and hella depressed) and then…Crash. Big time.
I’ll likely talk about that another time (this is about Velella Velella, right?), but after a year off getting psychiatric care and working menial jobs, I felt ready to go back and try again. With intention, this time. And earned a B.A. in English literature with a minor in religious studies. Totally qualified me to do…not much, but it was fun and I learned a lot.
Not that I avoided more drifting like our friend V. Velella again…oh, no. I delivered mail for nine years, which was often quite pleasurable for an introvert, and it paid really well, but was not exactly the type of challenge I knew I wanted. Plus, it literally left me disabled, to a certain degree, for life (permanent tendinitis, early arthritis…when I left the PO in 1999, I literally couldn’t hold a comb or a pencil, but I digress). I’d stayed because making a decision to intentionally go after something else required, well, planning. Overcoming fears. Even in as much physical pain as I was (plus going through a nasty divorce–1999 was NOT my favorite year), I couldn’t get myself to make changes.
Until I did. The Postal Service’s own doctor was telling me I needed to quit yesterday, if I didn’t want to be “crippled for life,” and while federal agencies aren’t required to hold to ergonomic standards, I could have tried to sue but it would have taken years–many years–with me in limbo in the meantime.
So, unlike me, I said, “Fuck it…I’m out” and quit. A letter to the Headmaster, a sayonara to the biggest asshole supervisor, and a genuine goodbye to the awesome supervisor and my coworkers. I felt like the ending of An Officer and a Gentleman, leaving the factory floor to cheers from my fellow limping, splint-wearing comrades.
Went back for a second degree, a TEACHING degree this time. I took in some renters to help with the mortgage. My sainted parents were paying for school and helping out with bills. I went on Minnesota Care insurance. I cleaned houses for cash (shhhh…) and worked for the Census in 2000. I nannied for a couple of friends. All sorts of intention!
I’ve been washed up on the beach a couple times (understatement) since then, but this isn’t supposed to be my biography. Well, metaphorically.
I have been at my current district for 15 years now, but I’ve done three distinctly different teaching jobs for it. Four, if you count teaching math (no, really) for grades 5-8 summer school one year. I’m not lazily floating wherever the winds and waves take me, though: I love what I do. I love my job. I’m challenged daily, challenges I like, and it’s both fun and emotionally draining. I’m proud of what I do.
I’ve been with my husband now for 27 years (we celebrate 19 years of marriage in July–yeah, I was skittish about getting into another marriage, can you tell?). Again, intentional. I don’t want to be anywhere else.
Well…maybe Sweden. I would like to move to Sweden, but it’s not amenable right now (no matter how much I’d love to avoid the destruction of the U.S.). But it’s not off the table, at least for me. Min man är inte så sugen på den här idén, men det får tiden utvisa.
Photo credit: Scripps Institute of Oceanography.
So, what does this have to do with Velella Velella? I don’t know. Maybe they enjoy not determining their fate. I like to float on the water, too (though I do not siphon plankton, at least not intentionally). Maybe they’re ready to crash and dry out on a beach somewhere. Maybe someday, I will feel that way, too. Maybe my Taoist friends, one of whom just passed away this week and the other did 21 years ago, would say again, “Don’t push the river, it flows by itself,” when I’m feeling rudderless. Maybe I need those periods of directionless existence to push me into picking a direction for a few years. Maybe one day, the V. Velella will evolve and think to itself, “Hey…wth…I want to go THAT way instead” and flutter itself into intentional locomotion.
And maybe I’ll be sipping a coffee on the beach when it happens, maybe in Sweden, and applauding the pretty, shiny blue blob-with-a-sail onward! Hej då!
*Yes, I know they’re animals, but…okay…
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