Web of Terribleness

I left the house at 10:15 this morning and it’s already over 80 degrees out. The sky is blue with no clouds anywhere.

It’s Monday so there is plenty of parking here and no crowds whatsoever. The water looks fairly calm with just a little bit of funk bouncing around. It’s a beautiful day and all is pretty much perfect here. I walk down the stairs and listen to the surf and the birds.

I get to the sand and there is plenty of it. Instead of a step from the end of the ramp to the sand, we now have a small (very small) burm of excess sand you have to step over just as you walk onto the ramp. I wonder to myself when that will change - probably January.

I get in the water and there is lots of loose seaweed debris floating in the shallows. The water temperature feels about the same as yesterday - high 60’s but there is definitely a good amount of 70+ water out there as well.

I start swimming south and stay fairly close to shore the entire way to the end of the beach. I can feel the current pushing me along in small steady pulses.

I’m letting my thoughts rest on the shore that I stare at all the way down. I’m sort of all worked up over work and it’s driving me crazy (in a proverbial way). I notice myself obsessing emotionally over work in general and getting all internally flustered and envisioning myself tangled in this web of terribleness. On the drive over I have a sudden epiphany to let go of this negative emotionalization. It strikes me that I have a choice as to how I confront this and this web is really more of my own design than my employer. In this moment in the car, it all makes perfect sense and I can feel my body relax as I lean into to just moving forward with things as they are at work instead of struggling with how I would prefer things to be. So I commit to meditating on this over the entire swim.

There are schools of Corbina swimming among the rocks below the headlands. I stare north to the Ritz and track the path I am about to cover. The water is not calm but not rough either. It’s a dark shade of blue and I spy a small flock of Pelicans round the corner of the point and head right in my direction. They veer north towards salt creek just before they reach me.

I head north and follow them but they are probably traveling about 20 times faster than I am. I’m making fairly good time to the north end of the beach. I’m wondering why it is that this year I often seem to be taking so much longer to reach the north end. Are the currents really particularly stronger than usual? I really don’t think I am going more slowly. My best guess is that it is because I have been taking more late swims that I normally do. I definitely notice a difference with morning vs. early afternoon swims when the winds are stronger. Most mornings I seem to fly across the beach but after noon, things really slow down. Yesterday was 90 minutes.

I watch the wakes of water tumble over themselves right beside my face. I imagine my struggle with work and offer the struggle to the water. Why should I work myself up in a frenzy when this entire ocean can receive and sustain my angst? I just need to put one hand in front of the other and keep doing it. That’s it and eventually I’ll be on the other side.

I finish in an hour and fifteen minutes today. Not too bad.