Five Minute Friday: OCEAN

Today’s prompt: OCEAN

I laughed and laughed (probably too much – it wasn’t that hilarious but it WAS very early in the day) yesterday when an article I was reading for work talked about the acronym for the Portland Urban Data Lake — PUDL.

The metaphors for data make me laugh – fog, lake. I’m not sure if there’s a data ocean but we are all dealing with so many waves of data it seems like there should be if there isn’t.

Like all of us, I am dealing with so many waves of incoming data — it’s definitely high tide for that kind of thing — and a trip to the REAL ocean would, to borrow from last week’s word, RESTORE me.

When I first started having tinnitus, it was summertime and our family was scheduled to go to the beach. It wasn’t until I was at the shore, sitting on the sand, taking in the roar of the ocean, that something was finally loud enough to drown out the rushing sound in my head.

I’m (mostly) used to the sound in my head now. There could be worse problems to have, but it was incredible to have relief for a few minutes, especially when the sensation was new.

The tinnitus also went away (briefly) after a chiropractic adjustment to my neck a year or two ago. There’s probably a large, meaningful message there about the effects of alignment on my literal head.

But back to the restorative ocean. Our family doesn’t go to St. George (the local and beautiful beach) for a weekly get-together anymore, but being back there would certainly help me align my head and my heart again, and drown out some of the incessant tides encroaching on my life.

Welcome to this week’s Five Minute Friday. Our instructions, via creator Kate Motaung: “Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.” (But I can’t resist spell checking, as you can imagine.)

Paula Kiger

Wife of one, Mom of two, Friend of many. My pronouns are she/her/hers.