Got a boat to build...

So this year has left me with a profound sense of something missing in my life, leaving me adrift--something fundamental, like the ache a quitting smoker has, of an undefined need that if I could just identify it, I could sate the craving and fulfill whatever it is that's creating this hole in my id. Or maybe it's in the ego, or the superego--I'm pretty sure it's in the unconscious somewhere, hiding behind a dresser like a timid puppy, unsure whether my psyche can be trusted not to laugh at it.
I've tried many different remedies to attempt to smooth this away, this speed bump in the psychological development of the Self; drugs (of various flavors), sex (of various flavors), hobbies, exercise, fishing, drinking, crafts--you name it, I've probably done it, which I suppose makes me some sort of demented Renaissance man, like Tommy Lee going to college to learn the art of Zen Buddhist Underwater Basket Weaving. College was an instructive experience, infinitely valuable, if only for the opportunity to immerse oneself in the hallowed halls of the sum of human experience, written, carefully researched, delineated, typeset or freely shaped, post-modernist, Neo-Classical, Chicago, Turabian, APA, MLA, beautifully hand-wrought or painstakingly exacting. It is an ivory tower, with all the conflicting imagery that it brings to mind--luminous, soaring, but simultaneously confining and insular. It filled a niche in my soul that was created specifically for it, like stretching a canvas before your first learn-to-paint class.
It was beautiful, wonderful, difficult and rewarding, and I realized after more than 18 years of schooling that I am not meant to be an academic. I have intelligence and the wherewithal to maintain an academic life should I so choose, but it would be a hollow maintenance of existence rather than a spiritually fulfilling drive.
Speaking of spirituality, I have gone through several flavors of religion in heavy enough doses that there should have been a warning label affixed, or at least a sticker advising that continued use could impair one's ability to operate machinery. I have never envied those for whom religion is a panacea to their own spiritual holes, as it is a patch at best, like a sleeping pill, good for a guaranteed dose of unconsciousness, but powerless to treat the underlying condition. God is a comfortable label our limited human consciousness uses to confine the infinite vastness of our reality to a conceptualization we can come to grips with. All we can see of the elephant is the tail, but it lets us hold on to something concrete, without which our minds would spiral into psychosis. I think this may be the driving force behind science--a drive to define, and therefore compartmentalize our existence, the better to grip the tail. Alpha Centauri is 4 light years away from our Sun--there, that's easier than just saying that it's too fucking far to comprehend. It would take me quite a while just to write the number of miles that is on this page, and you wouldn't want to actually read it, so I'll save us both some time.
So I guess the point of this post is that I've found something that has the best chance of any in recent memory of containing the possibility of filling this void, but now that I've found it, I'm unable to pursue it. There is a fantastic school here in Washington that is an *accredited* (who knew?) school teaching the disappearing art of building wooden boats. I don't mean childrens' toys-- I mean daysailers and ketches and restoring yachts and classic pieces of our watery Northwest heritage. THIS is something I could happily do the rest of my life, as I have been around boats my entire life, thanks to a similar affliction affecting my father, who passed on the boat genes to me; specifically, the ones for sail preference. I'd rather sail than have sex (mostly, although there are definitely some times with my wife that qualify as a spiritual experience...), and tuition is reasonable. Even better, while I'm in school, my current student loans would be deferred. Now, I'm not sure of what the market is capable of bearing in terms of hiring those with that level of woodworking experience, but I'm sure those skills are laterally-transferable, say into carpentry, finish woodworking, etc.
So after how many years spent looking, I've found what I want to do with my life. And then I find out that it is so far away that I'd have to leave my wife, ensconced as she is with a good job, a nice place to live and friends nearby, and go live in a little port town, probably with some other boatbuilding students and live the life of a bachelor again. So the dilemma is this: leave my wife for up to a year to fend for herself and be without each other for far longer than either of us could conceive of, or take my wife away from her carefully-built, hard won success to chase a pipe dream of building boats. Or I could stay here in Seattle and keep looking for a job that will pay our loan payments without selling too much of my soul. Some of it's for sale, but if I have to go into retail sales again, I'd rather just take my own life and set up Jen with the insurance payout... :D.
This can't be the best of all possible worlds; that would mean the boat school would be nearby and I wouldn't have any loans to pay off. Fuck. If this is the best of all possible worlds, I'm going to go get smashed and try not to think about it any more. If nothing else, I'll remember this and when I'm old and I've had a depressing career in some fluorescently-lit drab office stamping paperwork for 20 years, I can go do this and revel in the brief reprieve from this so-called "modern world." Maybe the world needs a few more wooden boats to remind us that all is not bigger, better faster moremoremoremore. Maybe what the world needs is a few hours in a creaky wooden sailboat, taking in the sheets and trimming her up so she skims the waves on her way out to where ever.