The doldrums, it is the time after school has let loose and the time for camp and action. I started writing a post Saturday morning, but didn’t finish, Father’s day came and went, then Monday, too. It seems as if I am busier now than when school was in session. Trying to keep my focus has been a challenge. I find myself drifting when I should be sailing strong.

Since my last post, I (we have):

• gotten W off to camp – a week-long scout leadership camp
• bought four new tires for the Tahoe
• finished reading my fourth summer book and started a fifth (book that is…)
• been to Vacation Bible School
• watched a movie at the theater with O and B
• been to the pool and swum 600 yards, only 1200 more and I have a mile
• taken O for a bike ride on her new bike – I avoided the DQ so I could maintain my diet
• cooked  ribs and BBQ chicken, made cucumber and red onion salad
• enjoyed a summer evening with neighbors on the patio
• watched a girls’ softball game
• begun my packing list for camp and Michigan, afterwards

I fall into this every summer, or so it seems. It is that first couple of weeks when I struggle with – ‘What’s next” – and then summer hits like white water and the raft I’m on is tossed about violently. It seems the past few summers have been that way. Sailors know the doldrums are the region close to the equator where there are no prevailing winds,

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

From “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I know the doldrums as the time when I seemingly drift and am not motivated enough to move forward but stay in the same place, because it is comfortable and safe.

Father’s Day brings me to thinking of my own father and the complicated issues surrounding our relationship and my own status as a father. My dad passed away three summers ago and in many ways, I have been drifting since. Certainly, there have been other issues, which have clouded the issues and distracted me, but I am still there.

I try to focus on the Father’s day when W first learned to ride a bike, or taking O to the movies and laughing like a hyena (wow, I spelled it correctly – it just didn’t look right). And moving forward.

Next week, W and I head off to summer camp and a week of intense blogging and activity – I blog from camp and share with the troop. Afterwards, he and I head north over the UP to the cottage and a month of swimming, boating, and enjoying the Northwoods. I don’t think I am ready, I have too many things I undone, un-started, and un-thought of…. So, I had better buck up and buckle down.Today is gonna be a great day and the prospects for tomorrow are a million and six times better. I don’t get a hundred and four days of summer like Phineas and Ferb, I get eighty days of summer and there are sixty-two remaining – so, I need to get moving and make them count. Making the Days Count, one day at a time.

Do you ever feel like you are drifting? What do you do when you drift or lose focus?