Sharks

So it's been two weeks since I got back from the Bahamas. Two weeks of proudly showing off the video of Adam and myself diving with sharks. I need to get it on YouTube, cos I think it's pretty damned cool. Two weeks, and we're already talking about our next dive trip. Maybe Roatan and one of the live-aboard or dive package trips. Maybe the Galapagos. I'd love to see the scalloped hammerhead sharks schools. We're also talking about getting a group together, maybe ten people or something. Anyone interested?

So for the first couple of days I was completely on a high from the trip. And a little jetlagged, don't know why I find the east coast harder than I do England to readjust from, but I do. But just to have been diving again! To be lucky enough to see the hammerhead shark on our very first dive; to glide through the water as though I was flying over the wrecks used in two James Bond films; to kneel in a circle like sacrificial victims while some bloke wearing chain mail fed chunks of fish to sharks and got them to swim right up to us. It's definitely one of the most incredible trips I've had, and one of the most amazing things I've ever done.

But the problem is that now I've done it. I want to do it again. I want to do it lots and lots.

I've loved diving since before I started it. Snorkelling in Hawai'i with turtles, that's what made me want to dive. And hence the turtle round me neck, and the 'I saw a Turtle' T-shirt that everyone always comments on. Learning to dive in St. Thomas back in 2003 was one of the things that got me through my last ship contract. Once I was under the water it didn't matter how crappy my day had been, because suddenly everything was better. Even the one or two times I've had pressure problems and only been able to stay very shallow, just floating under the surface is great. So now all I can think about is diving. Adam didn't help matters because the whole time we're down ther he's saying 'If I was you I'd be here right now, you have nothing keeping you in Vegas.' And I really don't. I mean, I have some great friends, but I'll always stay in touch and I'll make more. I have the house, but being upside down in a mortgage almost $100,000, ir really makes you lose interest in paying the bloody thing. So why AM I stil here? I can't seem to focus on anything properly right now. I don't really want to hang out with people, or go to the movies, or write, or work out. The flip side of this is I'm actually trying harder- pushing myself to write, managing a couple thousand words a week which isn't too bad. I went to the gym for the first time i a year or two, and I'm still hanging out with people. But there's something in the back of my mind, looking out, whispering to me just beyond the edge of my hearing. If I could hear what the voice was saying, maybe I'd be able to focus properly and be able to follow through with something. . .something like a blog that was supposed to be about something else but then I got distracted. . .