7.11
(Skip noming on pancakes and playing hearthstone)
After I lost another game of hearthstone, I went out and put on a wet dive skin in the communal shower begrudgingly and headed out to hunt. I went all over the reef and my camera froze in the first 20 minutes again. Oh well. Thankfully my project doesn't require a camera. I found a new species of hermit crab which I will identify later. I missed gettingsome really awesome photos of a chain eel. I got to swim with a SPOTTED EAGLE RAYYYYYYYYYY. Not to mention allof the other amazing creatures that I got to swim with, like my mullet fish friends and all of the hermit crabs. I was able to get enough data for a little while, enough for some sort of 2 day satisfaction. Nearning the end though, I started to get that sour taste in my mouth. Though I kept powering through, I'm worried it's because of the depth and me not handling the pressure.
Of course at least once on this trip I had to do something completely dumb, so I fell out of a hammock in front of Gilchrist who smiled and laughed at me. Oh well.
Last night I made another coconut ring with half of a heart, two lines, and an arrow and I created my own symbolic reasoning for them.
My stomach isn't feeling the best, (neither is my head, bit of dehydration and sunstroke I'm sure) so I think I'm going to head up soon and lay down. Best not be sick because I still have to collect more data tomorrow.
After a quick nap I think I just have a bit of sun stroke and am pretty dehydrated with a touch of a fever. Hopefully I can power through and then just collapse once I get in the car to go to the new apartment.
I'm mentally working through some things as well. Going home to another new place is odd. I keep feeling uprooted. Despite loving the adventure, I still need a place to come home to. I want to go out to find myself, but have a space for me; a safety net. Throughout my life I have been able to go away, but know there will be a place with my address. The constant change of that is changing me. Going to college, I have no plan, and that awful realization torments me to no end. With so little money and not enough time, I worry I will become more lost than I already am. Even though I'm on an amazing trip with amazing people, I can't help but have anxiety about all of the things I still need to do and haven't done back home. I'm worried to go back to school too, and to visit my dad again in December, and all of these things I just can't seem to escape from. Soon I will have to be renting my own apartment and settling in a job. It's speeding up so much faster than I would like it to. And no matter how much time everyone says I have, I know it's a lie. Though most people have no idea what they're doing with their lives and are just going through the motions; I can't do that. I'm not that complacent. I'm not like that, and I never want to be that way; ignoring the feeling of clipped wings. I want to figure out who I am and who I want to become so that I have something to work for. But this constant worry keeps me in the dark. My hope was that this trip would help me even a little bit to figure out where I wanted to take myself in the next 5 years, and all I have to show for it is sickness and anxiety masked by throwing myself into work too hard and crashing right after and listening to sad music to try and feel something, anything but worry. Happy, sad, mad, angry, just anything else different from what I'm constantly stuck in. I keep searching my past, re-living the awful moments that make me cringe, on this island with nothing to show for myself. Even if I found a new brilliant scientific breakthrough, I don't think it would pull me out of this lost state. No matter how many doors seem to be held open for me, if I have no drive to go through any of them then what's the point?
It makes me feel even worse that I can't enjoy every single second of this place. No matter how much medicine I take, no matter how far I travel, I can't escape the feeling that I'm lost with no reason or drive to find the way out.
(Skip nap which made me feel a bit better and sunset watching, slow din dins eating, and more anxiety. There were no notes today and no night snorkel, so I headed up to bed after Thomas opened a Hearthstone pack for me and I played for a little while. I worked on fixing my ring. Then bed.)