Dive Junkie

All I ever really want to do is dive. 

I know there are a lot of people who say that.  I know a lot of people who say that.  I work around many of them.  Every few days I spend the morning with a group of people dedicated enough to the sport that they volunteer their time at the aquarium, diving, for any variety of reasons. 

They're people who go on dive holidays and people who read all the magazines. There are instructors and DMs among them; folks who are actively teaching on the side, from whatever their day jobs are.   These are not dabblers, they're divers. 

But there's a separation, a sort of sad separation, between the way I look at diving and the way most around me do.  They have other interests, don't they?  They're into cycling or running, hiking or kayaking, tennis or book clubs or politics or knitting or photography.

I dive.  For work, for fun, for vacation and vocation.  While at work planning dives, dive safety, and dive activities I take a break now and again to read dive blogs or messageboards.  Or I look at Facebook where my entire feed and all my friends are divers.  Then I go home to sit and talk to my wife (a diver) about diving.  We have no other hobbies; we dive.  What's more, we cave dive: a sport within a sport, the BASE jumping of parachuting, the F1 of auto racing, the Nathan's hot dog contest of American gluttony.  A sport that requires absolute focus while participating... But it's like we never relax that focus, even when dry for months.

I worry that I'm missing out.  The world spins, full of interesting people, places, and things... And all I do is dive. 

Then, ah-ha, but then I actually do dive.

I get to visit those places mostly hidden from human experience, and I can revel in the quiet, the peace, the thrill of an alien world.  It touches me in all the ways it touches every diver.  I couldn't say anything about the experience that any diver doesn't already know in their way.  Magical, otherworldly, transcendent, peaceful, exciting.  It's all of those things. 

So what is it that has fixed, in me, this singlemindedness where other divers can explore or even have other facets to themselves and their lives?

Am I boring?  Or are they unfocused?

I have tried to find other interests, indulging friends and acquaintances their flights of fancy thinking, "Perhaps I'm just not paying attention."  But alas, I find mostly boredom.  Even old interests of mine seem stale without, forgive the pun, depth. 

Even among other divers I have become impatient or intolerant.  Seeking some social contact (other than just my wife and I talking about where we'd rather be diving each night on the couch), we go out to meetings of the local dive club.  It's a long-running, well-run, and really great club, among whose membership we have several friends and dive buddies.  There, at least, I figured we would be among our people.

No.  Sadly.

We show up to the meetings and listen to the dive reports (some of which to some interesting, far-flung, or at least expensive sounding places), and the presentations on photography, and the introductions of all the new members and the like.  Then, as the official meeting breaks up and the chatting begins, I find myself at a loss of things to talk about.  The conversation strays into non-diving topics on which I have no interest whatsoever.  I don't really care what people do for a living unless it's dive related.  I don't care about the backpacking vacation they just took through Turkey, there's no diving in those hills. 

Worst of all is when I find myself not caring as much as I should about even their diving.  It's diving isn't it?  I should be excited to hear about their experiences and share our common joy in the underwater world.  At the very least, it's polite... they are always willing to listen to me babble.  Instead I wind up with an uncomfortable and unjustified feeling of superiority as I think, "40 feet deep on a calm coral reef, huh?  I have actually, literally fallen asleep in those circumstances."

(Note: waking up underwater is really discombobulating.)

And so, among divers, my people, all I wind up thinking is, "I really wish I was diving."

Ah well.  

I've always been a bit of a loner, even when I haven't been an outright outcast.  Maybe I'm just used to it now, some sort of social manifest destiny.  Yet, on the rare cases I meet someone else who is as single minded as I am, we can happily talk about bolt snaps for hours.

Or perhaps I have become one of those dive snobs I so despised when I was first learning, who seemed to look down their nose at me, a mere open water diver.  Yet I'm always perfectly delighted to answer any student's question with as much detail as they like; it's part of why I love my job.

I suppose it could just be a bit like an addiction.  My drug is floating around in the back of a cave, marveling at the natural beauty.  It is a high, and it's all I crave, to the detriment of my finances and my social life.

Perhaps there's help out there, but the first step in getting over an addiction is wanting to. 

I don't. 

Dream Job

I like my job.  I suppose that's rare, you're supposed to bitch about your job, that's the socially expected thing.  But I genuinely like what I do and I'm pretty damn good at it. 

Oh, there's plenty to bitch about.  I've been dramatically underpaid for ages (no really, I know everyone thinks they're underpaid, but unless you're working as much as double the hours you get paid for and still bring home significantly less than the national average then shut up), my department lacks the funding for even some simple projects, I have become ostracized by the very people whose happiness and satisfaction I am committed to, and I am still recovering from struggling with a bullying and abusive boss.

But, you know, other than that...

My coworkers are supportive and helpful, my boss is supportive easy to work for, the people I manage are enthusiastic and committed, the work itself is gratifying and substantial, the organization has a mission I believe in, and I don't feel like a soulless sellout punching a clock for a bleary, grey majority of my life.

It isn't quite the job I'd imagined it to be.  So many years ago I wondered whether, someday, I could fill this position but dismissed it as a pointless flight of fancy.  For me to get it a dear friend would have to vacate it which was beyond imagination; he would always be here because that was right and normal.  Over pizza one day he said he wouldn't, that he wanted to retire and would I do the job?

I was ecstatic with this dream come true.  When I started I began to learn just how unlike I imagined it the work was.  And, with (perhaps foolish) vigor I pursued every angle doggedly and with an idea of how to make thing smoother, better, faster, easier, and more efficient.

It didn't work.  Somehow I still don't understand or recognize I alienated my friend who abandoned plans of retirement and spent all his psychic energy on damaging as much of my life as possible.  So I struggled and I sank myself into the work.  I ignored the nastiness and the aggression as much as I could, or tried to, anyway.  It wore away at me, in the end, and severely damaged my health, my sanity, my marriage, and my sense of self... but still I fought.  The work was important and it needed to be done, so despite every dig and cruelty I kept on doing it.

Until I couldn't anymore.  One day it reached a fever pitch; a shaky truce of sorts was plowed through like a rabid rhino through a butter sculpture of a chandelier.  It was enough and I snapped.  As committed to the job as I was I realized that if I stayed it was going to kill me.

With unspeakable pain I walked away.  I had already lost one friend, and in leaving I lost most of my others.  I had tried, probably unsuccessfully, to hide my pain, but I still can't imagine what they'd thought when I left.  If they thought of it at all.

For months I ached.  I worked at a job I couldn't care less about because it was a job and I hoped I'd be called on to return to the organization I loved soon.  I heard about an easily avoidable disaster that threatened to take out the entire organization I worked so hard for and could do nothing but stand by and watch it unfold.

Until I did return.  And begin the new battle of repairing what was damaged.  Then getting along with the day to day work I'd learned was the true face of the job obscured under the facade of joy.

And now here I am.  On the train to work, with a full-day ahead, and the energy to do it renewed.  Perhaps my life will start to resemble what I daydreamed it would look like those years ago over pizza and hope.

Or not.

But in the meantime, I will keep working.  I'll do my job the absolute best I'm capable of.  Because despite it all, I still like my job.  I still like what I do, and I'm better at it today than I was even yesterday.