Return to Nut Island

I strolled down Comfort Road yesterday and in the process, I walked right out of the comfort zone.

Allow me to unpack this gibberish for you.

One of my Meetup groups had scheduled an outing to Governors Island, which is located in New York Harbor, roughly 800 yards from Manhattan and about 400 yards from Brooklyn.

The island has been used for military purposes since the Revolutionary War and it is home to Fort Jay and Castle Williams. Over the years it has been used a military stockade and a U.S. Coast Guard installation until 1996.

It has since been decommissioned and is now open for public use. I’ve been there several times and I always marvel at how you can see the skyscrapers in Manhattan a short distance away and yet I still feel as if you’re miles away from the city.

The local Native Americans used to call the place “Nut Island”, probably because of the chestnut, hickory, and oak trees located there, although I suspect they named it after me.

I always have fun when I go there, but naturally I picked this time to launch into one of my deranged should-I-stay-or-should-I go routines, where I suddenly remember all the chores and duties I should be addressing instead of going out on a beautiful day.

The comfort zone was coming on real strong, tempting me to go sit in local park all day a half-block from my house and then watch Netflix all night.

I was really doing a number on myself emotionally (what me, take meds?) until I finally ordered my mind to only have empowering thoughts.

It seems that I can think in the negative with the greatest of ease, but getting my brain to work for me instead of against me takes a ton of effort.

I decided—yes, finally--to take the damn ferry near my home to lower Manhattan where I could get the ride to Governors Island.

But I was resisting all the way. When I arrived at the 69th Street pier landing, I saw the gates were chained and part of me immediately says, “Well, I tried, time to go home.”

All Ashore Who’s Going Ashore

However, I saw people waiting on the pier and I knew they couldn’t all be there for the fishing. Moments later the ferry came chugging into port and a crewmember came up to unlock the gates.

Okay, so I get to Manhattan, walk a few blocks to the Governors Island pier, where I see people lining up and I instantly look for excuses to jump this ship.

It’s too crowded, I fretted, I won’t be able to get on board. And then the line started moving and we all got on with plenty of room to spare.

One of the few things I did right yesterday was to spare my sister and auntie any of my self-made misery. All too often I drag them into incredibly irritating indecisiveness hoping they’ll tell me something I want to hear.

I didn’t call them until I arrived at Governors Island to let them know I made the decision myself.

There was a Roaring Twenties jazz festival happening on the island and it was fun watching people disembarking from the ferry in old-timey outfits.

A group of Italian ladies in flapper outfits asked me to take their picture—the city provides a perfect background—and I happily obliged.

My Meetup group arrived a short time later and we had a nice day. Many of the old houses on the island are being as artists studies, including a filmmaking group.

I took a ton of photos during the day, and I didn’t notice until this morning that I gotten an image of a street signs at the intersection of Evans Road and…Comfort Road.

It was outside a church, so obviously this was a sign from God that I was doing the right thing. Or at least the way I’m going to play it.

We spent most of the day there, then we all caught the ferry and went our separate ways.

It was a nice day with nice people, so yeah, I think I did a good job of getting out of that comfort zone and escaping to Nut Island.