Transitioning back

DL2955, 114 Minutes east of Seattle, 19-MAR-2019 – It is a transitional time. We’re headed back to Seattle with two houses sold, one undergoing renovation, one about to start. My friend and editor, Peter Coleman, sent me an email discussing the boat he bought in the UK (he lives in Australia), his plans for motoring through the canals of France and a sincere invitation to skip our transatlantic sail and join him and his spouse.

I’m not sure if on an average day I receive any emails addressed to me, John Juliano, other than john@jjcs.com, a scraped email address. I feel at times the only real business offer I get is from the extortionist who plans to distribute videos of me watching porn that he says he took through the camera on my laptop. If I were to pay him, I would learn about cryptocurrencies, since that is how he demands payment. But, he writes so often telling me that this is the last time he’ll write that my email client has decided his mail is spam.

Peter sent an email from Bangkok airport asking what I knew about a vendor that may have gone belly up. Sure enough the principal employees no longer list themselves as employees of that company on LinkedIn.

I knew nothing about it.

Peter and I exchanged emails about the conference I attended in Florida. He said he might welcome a color piece on the end of my era in newspapers. I haven’t worked in newspapers in three years. I am transitioning away from thinking of myself as being in newspapers. I sometimes think I’m transitioning from being a part of this culture. The wash of marketing that I have lived under these months on the east coast has not left a mark. I don’t feel the yearning to have what I am being sold. It’s coming to the point that I don’t understand a lot of it – Not that I don’t understand the technology – I don’t understand why anyone would want the stuff that is being marketed.*

I feel like I am becoming a visitor from a foreign culture, if not a foreign planet. There was a short while where I would say the most uncool old-man things that were embarrassing to anyone very much younger than me and which I thought were very funny – not that what I was saying was funny but that this person would be embarrassed for me was just hysterical. My dad used to do the same thing; I finally understood.

We, no, actually, I am transitioning from active investor to passive investor. As I sell my houses I do not buy others. Jennifer is buying one for every two houses she sells, so I guess like many people, she’s downsizing.

I am returning to who I now think of myself: one half of a couple that is going sailing. I’m transitioning back to that person.

I once lived a double life: I had a life in San Diego, where I lived alone, worked on a business I owned and was respected as an international expert in my field. I had a second life in Atlanta where I was the husband of an international expert in her field; A husband who couldn’t (and never did) get a business foothold in Atlanta. Airplanes were the time machine that took me between the separate realities.

Jennifer and I ride this plane that takes us from being a couple selling off their houses to a couple that spend their time either prepping to sail or sailing.

Jennifer and I never saw snow this winter. There was no snow in New York while we were there, nor Seattle, when we were there, nor Atlanta. On this flight from JFK, it seems we are only flying over snow.

Jennifer and I have talked a good deal about when we’ll sail south. We have our vision of ourselves sailing wearing cold-weather attire. It occurred to me, Jennifer probably already had this figured out, that we’ll be sailing in warm weather until we head north back to Alaska in 2020.

And so we will transition to being warm weather sailors. We have our own preconception of warm weather sailors, and we’re wary. Though we look fondly at the pictures of us sailing summers on Long Island Sound where we shot may pictures from the shoulders up because we sailed without clothes. We were tan!

We won’t go back to Alaska this year. We won’t sail off in April to chase the cold weather north. We’ll live principally in Jennifer’s house in Port Townsend and see what flowers are planted around the property. I’ll complete all of the work I have planned for Caro Babbo and build house things, like a fire pit and we’ll entertain guests for parties and guests who come to visit.

It will be a long damn time before I transition from the guy who is preparing to go sailing to the sailor. But I will, again. †

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* Having said this, I do buy things that seem useful. I bought an Amazon Echo and find it quite useful. The old adage that progress makes luxuries occurs to me when I tell Alexa to reheat a cup of tea in the microwave.

†That we are sailing from Lake Union to Poulsbo the morning of the 21st to attend the Cascadia sail-in, notwithstanding.