“What are you going to name it?”
When I was in college a few years ago, my brother Matt was visiting me from far away and we went to visit my dad who lives close to me. We drank some beers and sat there and talked about things we were going through, excited for, dealing with, thinking about, etcetera. I expressed something about me feeling like I was really struggling at the time, he expressed something about “you have set goals, Phil, that way you will feel like you’re accomplishing things along the way.”
I told him I wanted to graduate college and have a sailboat, and an awesome job, and this and that. He said, “well make that your carrot. Like the carrot at the end of a stick that keeps you always striving for those things”. I had heard the phrase before, but this time it put a whirlwind of temporary issues on my mind into a funnel and suddenly it wasn’t about those issues as much as it was about keeping my eyes on the intermittent goals. More though, is that I started telling people years ago that I would buy a boat eventually and name it “the Carrot”, so I’m a man of my word, it had to be the Carrot. And one more thing, sometimes the conversations I have with my family or close friends really impact me, so this also is sort of a small dedication to those peoples good influences on me.
The way I understand it is that I never will actually reach my carrot or carrots, because I always want to strive for something. It is actually that the achievement of getting this sailboat upon this stage of my life that is what ‘my carrot’ once was a little while ago. And I have more goals beyond what I am doing now. However, the sailboat itself, deserves this name. It will be my carrot, and it -being a sailboat- will require maintenance and care and energy and I will always have a vision in my mind of what it would look like and feel like if it was perfect. Although in a good way, the reality is that I will have strive for it and work for it and it will remain a carrot at the end of a stick, there will always be something to improve or fix or do. I want the challenges and the experiences and the benefits of a sailboat, and it wasn’t hard to come to terms that this hobby to get it perfect (in my eyes) will always be a goal set in front of me that I’m continuously trying to reach. It was easy to come to terms with this because it makes me so genuinely happy.
One problem. I didn’t like the way “the Carrot” looked typed out. I just kept seeing the words Car rot. Then, influenced by another blog I aimlessly came upon on day, I realized that sometimes really plain words in English can sound and look really great in another language. Thus, Google translate became my friend. And Portuguese became my better friend. And, if you try it yourself you’ll see and hear what I found. Copy/paste this into your browser it you want: http://translate.google.com/#en/pt/The%20Carrot
“A Cenoura”. It’s pronounced like Ah Senora, roll the r. It’s fun for me to keep trying to say correctly. I think it looks killer in certain fonts, and it’s going to fit perfectly on the stern of my sailboat, currently named Kona Kai. The current font looks silly and I can’t take it seriously, the name has no emotional meaning to me. Off it will go, sooner I hope than later, and on will go A Cenoura.
There’s a whole deal with renaming a boat, so you can look forward to the postings about that when the new name finally gets put on.