Sept 2 life in the coronaverse

I am blessed. I keep telling myself how truly lucky I am. I have a great wife, an amazing kid, and awesome friends.

Why do I feel stressed and anxious? Why do I worry so much? It’s like I have been walking in a haze lately. Serendipity is down and it still needs repair. They told me it could be the master computer. Why does that sound so scary? Probably because in the world of boat repairs it is scary.

The turnover of the condo didn’t go as smoothly as I planned. My tenants didn’t leave it clean as he promised. I got complaints from the new owners. I feel bad I couldn’t be at Big White the morning they took over so I could hand over the keys and make sure they were happy.

It turns out they weren’t.

It felt out of my control. I think when so many things happen at once it is tough to maintain control. It’s like have a big plate of spaghetti and taking too many meatballs. Inevitably a meatball will roll off the plate and onto the floor. It can be tough picking up the fallen meatball and cleaning it off. Sometimes that meatball can get stepped on and there is no saving it. All we can do in that case is pick up the pieces and carry on.

I had a visit from an old friend this week. We went to high school together and have been friends for many years. He moved to London, Ontario, two years after I moved to Kelowna. We have only seen each other a few times since we both escaped Calgary over a dozen years ago. Yet when we saw each other it was as if time had not passed at all. He and his wife had driven all the way across Canada in three days. A feat I am not sure I could accomplish. It was great to meet her and awesome to see my friend. We used to golf together when we lived in Calgary, and he made a point to golf with my wife and I when he came here.

Unfortunately, it was my first golf game of the year. Even more unfortunate was the timing. His visit and our golf game coincided with the turn-over of the condo. It was more important to me that I be there to see my friend and go golf with him than it was to be at Big White to turn over the unit to the new owners. When the texts came from my realtor I was on the fourteenth hole. I knew then I should have left the phone in the car. Our new technology is a blessing and a curse. My love/hate relationship with my phone definitely leaned to the hate side after a short while. Why is it I feel it is more important to check my phone and reply than it would have been to ignore or leave it behind? It is a rhetorical question I have no answer for. I wanted to be in the moment with my friend, to not distract from his enjoyment by giving off stressful energy.

I failed.

I felt the failure in my being. I hate beating myself up but it is something that happens without my control. I failed to ensure that the renters followed up on their promise to leave the place clean. I failed to be in the moment on the golf course. I found myself frustrated and angry. I wanted to make the moment with my buddy a fun one to remember. Not one where I was on the phone texting and getting agitated. I’m lucky he understood. We finished our game and connected on the eighteenth green, battered and worn but happy to be outdoors and together.

The silver disc shone above the mountains in the distance. We sat by the fire and watched the flames dance while the moon rose rapidly overhead. It was an amazing connection in the night – we sat and reminisced about days gone by, about other nights camped by a fire. My friend Scotty was only here for the night. We laughed and told stories and watched the view of the moon reflected in the lake below. I felt the simplicity in the conversations and breathed in the serenity of our view. I relished the connection with my lifelong friend.

As we said our goodbyes we smiled and promised to see each other again sooner. Six years is too long between connections. I felt better for seeing him. I knew I did the right thing by spending time with an old friend. We need to take advantage of our moments with other people. Because in the end, stuff doesn’t matter. It is our relationships with each other, our connections with people we care about that really matter. The rest is noise in the coronaverse.