in(deed).

I've returned from my Caribbean cruise with the family.  There was no internet, and no phone available on the ship (well, there was, but the cost was exorbitant), which was actually really, really nice.  I can't say I've been without since last year when I was on a wee work boat for a week.  Although, internet would have been welcome in that instance, it was a pretty poopy hitch.  In any case, it was pleasant not obsessively checking my phone, or email, or facebook all the time.  I know I do too much of it, even though I don't really care, and don't hear from people often enough for the amount I check to see who's contacted me.  OCD, I tell you, I'm OCD sometimes.

Beyond this, the trip was wunderbar.  Oh, I totally overdid it, and my body is rebelling at present; and I ate too much, and didn't get enough sleep or nearly enough water, but at the end of the day, it was grand to have a vacay with the family that allowed for so much time together, but not so much as to drive me crazy.  It was also just really, really enlightening.  In the past few months I've been in intimate situations (not romantically intimate, more tete-a-tete sort of intimate, long periods of time spent in close quarters, with the same people, like on the transit to Africa on the Boa, and this trip with the fam), and have started to understand myself so much better.  I keep thinking of the Bob Marley song, "Running Away," certainly a remnant from our shore excursion in Jamaica.  But it's on my mind, that you can't run away from yourself, just like Bob says in the song.  One can blame shortcomings on others for only so long, until eventually comes the day when one has to own up and accept that the shortcomings are one's own. 

Family, I suppose, is the best mirror for everything we love and hate about ourselves.