Advanced Essay #1: That time I went snorkeling

I don't think I had anything particular in mind with what to accomplish with this paper, but I had a decent story and I could be really blunt about the overall message without it sounding weird (hopefully). I think I did the story pretty well, as well as explaining the overall issue, though the transition between the two was awkward. 

To be perfectly honest, most of the time I’m doing anything, I just want to enjoy myself and chill out. There are very few things that make me want to be excited when I’m doing them, but the ultimate goal is always enjoyment or at least to be really chilled out. For me it’s escapism, which is either fine or bad depending on your philosophical or moral bend. To me, you’re coming into this world with nothing and leaving with nothing, so what else matters really but how much enjoyment I can get out of life?

So generally all I really do with my life is escape. I mean I have no moral qualms with it, and it is when I enjoy life the most, so escapism is a pretty go-to thing for me. There are some obvious drawbacks, which are lack of motivation sometimes, snapping out of it can even be difficult, though normally not a problem. So this story is just going to be one of those moments where I didn’t want to snap out of it, and one of the best times in my life that I can remember (a lot of that is due to escapism, so it may seem irrelevant to this but believe me, it isn’t.)

So over last summer my family and I finally got a chance where we were financially stable enough to go on a vacation to a place of our choosing, and since we had some inheritance leftover from my grandmother passing, we had some substantial wiggle room with the destination. This is one of the moments where escapism is rather important, seeing as my dead grandmother was the main reason we were going. To be honest she hated the idea of people grieving over her after she was gone, so do I, so I decided to simply not.

We finally decided to go to the florida keys, as it was as cheap as going to Wildwood, NJ (crazy thought but completely true). My dad was only present for the first half of the trip, but I can’t be honest and also say this was to our displeasure, as he was the main reason we were in the aforementioned financial problem. Again, escapism. I feel like the image that people get when they think of it is either being totally ignorant (ignorance is bliss), or being in a state with no worry. While neither are entirely wrong, they aren’t right either, it can be a much more subtle thing than that. For example, hear yelling, put on headphones and throw on music. It can really be as simple as that. But anyway, I’d say a part of the vacation where I saw this all a little more clearly was when I went snorkeling.

We had about 2 days left and I really didn’t want to go back to Philly. It was so laid back down there, people were either living penny to penny or off of retirement. Always so casual, no drama, people were just plain happy. So we decided to do something that we hadn’t really tried before which was snorkeling. I always imagined myself having that, “NOPE, NOPE, NOPE,” attitude about snorkeling but I decided to actually try it.

The ride over was as beautiful as the rest of the Florida keys, with pretty wildlife and scenic ocean views. We were going to a protected coral reef, so god only knows what I thought I was going to see before getting there. But when I got there I was honestly surprised. The water was more clear than it had been the entire ride over. I stopped looking at anything but the brightly tropical colored fish I could see 30 feet down. Once we got the signal to drop I didn’t even hesitate, despite seeing barracuda and sharks in the water.