The Most Stressful Beach Day of All Time


We went to Playa Samara today, even though the beaches in Costa Rica are still mostly closed. We had been talking about seeing Samara for a long time, it's a lovely twisty winding road over the mountains from Nicoya. We had a 6 pm appointment in Nicoya at the nearest Riteve car inspection station for the car our friend left with us. We thought we would do him a solid and get it inspected. Nicoya is an interesting place with shopping and the oldest church in Guanacaste, but Samara is not much past it.

Jim knows that since the COVID 19 crisis started I've been working longer hours and writing about some stressful things, that I'm feeling super exhausted in the wake of finding our dear President had family and friends teargassed to have a photo op in front of a church. So he suggested we make a day of it, a beach sort of a day. We did. It didn't go off without a hitch, unfortunately, and it was more than the embarrassment of rolling up to the Riteve in a rattletrap of a jeep that makes the Clampett family truck look modern. It's never good when onlookers laugh at the car you're in at the inspection station.

Backtrack a few days ago. I posted on Facebook that I need to take a messenger and social media break due to a couple of things, the outrageous news feed where I cannot keep up with stories for NLQ and sometimes end up updating three times a day, the dire news happening around the world, our stupid president. Add in the constant drumbeat of trolls off certain gossip vloggers page trying to message me, others messaging to complain they didn't like the way someone spoke to them in the comments at NLQ, others wanting to point me to this or that person they think I should fight with, and a very l-o-n-g laundry list of things. Quite frankly the messenger messages I am getting are overwhelming and are the main stressor for me now. I've turned off messenger except for a couple of times a day.

After spelling this out as nicely as I could word it on Facebook and in messages to the top four most problematic people yesterday was better. Some of them didn't quite get it. I told them, a little less nicely I need them to give me some space.


Today I get up, a few messages from folks I am working with on projects, one a possible YouTube bullying no tolerance thing. Another a guy I've been talking to from a group trying to expose abuse at Christian teen homes. Someone else that wants me on their podcast. Another writing a piece for me. A few simple messages I did answer.

One of the drags of the recent message onslaught is that I missed a critical call from a family member this last week, and calls/messages/communications from my adult children. Get in the way of my family and I'm something less than nice, particularly when it's sheer idiocy involved. I will cut me a bish or three.

Updated this blog while Jim was having his mens group and we left immediately after breakfast,....... and my phone BLEW up! I looked, the same old rabble, including a few I'd told that I would not be available, including a close friend that knew I would be out of town on a personal day to relax. Since I try not to use data on my phone because we're on a pay as you go plan I just shut my phone off completely. Irked that I was being spammed anew. My message bought me a day, that's all, one day of limited contact.



Every time I turned on the phone to take a photo the messages poured in fast and furious. I opened and answering nothing. It got so bad that this afternoon on the way to Samara when I turned it back on to look at Maps something like five hundred messages from that handful of people kept popping up and crashed my damn ancient Iphone (it's a 7), crashed my phone and drained the last little bit of battery when I needed it so badly to make sure we were still on Rutas 150.

No one, I repeat, no one has the right to make that many constant demands of me. If you're that bored get a puppy, or a life, or a sex toy. THIS was just so inappropriate and overwhelming. Particularly since I'd spoken to the worst offenders and posted don't do this on social media.



They just poured the stress and irritation on what was supposed to be a relaxing day driving through remote parts of the Nicoya peninsula.

Tomorrow, when I'm not mad and cussing inwardly, I need to have five conversations. I need to wait until I am calm, because my fuse has been lit and the explosion has happened. I have enough trouble policing appropriate boundaries in my life, and to have them so badly trampled right now is infuriating.  Even worse that it's friends I've already asked not to do this for awhile.  Boundaries are something I have had to learn, and learn to defend.

In January I turned off messaging for NLQ and have the emails going to a collector box that sends out a generic message. I can see I may have to do the same thing, or abandon my social media accounts, and set up new ones only my family has. This is stealing my joy.  No one, and nothing is worth that.

I am beginning to think whoever it was that said that certain behaviors tell you more about a person's morality than any belief system they may spout is right on the money. I've always said you can get decent people from jerks based upon who puts their grocery carts in the correct places, who honors their friends requests, and obeys safety rules like masking and social distancing. It boils down to having consideration for others.

Our friend's car that we took for the inspection flunked. It's got so many things wrong with it. But I figured it might.

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