Well, I have less than five weeks to go onboard the Majesty. Five weeks and my first contract will be over. I've been here since March 5th. I'll sign off on September 24th, fly back to Indianapolis for three weeks of vacation, and then fly to Spain to join the Adventure of the Seas on October 13th. I'll be fulfilling another full contract with Adventure and will be onboard for roughly seven months.
I'm not really sure what to think at this point in my contract. Many of my friends onboard who have been in this same position were very excited to sign off the ship and have the contract over with. They couldn't wait to go on vacation and be home. I'm not sure that I feel that way.
Most people onboard are looking for ways to 'make the contract go faster' by filling their down time with side jobs and extra assignments. I don't want to do that either. I understand that people like to make a little extra money with the side job, but, it seems that a lot of people are just trying to make the contract go by as quickly as possible.
For me, it's different. This aren't precisely the right words, but, I don't really have anywhere to go. I don't really have a 'home' right now.
Don't get me wrong, now. Am I looking forward to seeing Ted? Absolutely! Friends that I haven't seen in 6 months? Definitely. Eating food other than the 'curry du jour' in the crew mess? Without a doubt. Am I excited to watch my college and pro football teams and be able to turn on ESPN without seeing days and days of in depth cricket, cycling, and Australian rules football coverage? That will be great. And, of course, I am enthusiastically awaiting walking around places where I don't have to duck (for fear of hitting my head) all the time like I do onboard.
Besides that, however, I don't have a lot of motivation to get off the ship. There is no "home" for me to go back to currently. I wrote in a previous blog post that home is just a concept to me at this point. The ship is my home, I suppose, but it can never truly be that. The ship is a temporary place to be for everyone. It can never be permanent. It will never be a place where I can be home because of it's transient nature. Onboard, I am literally here today and gone tomorrow. Relationships with other crew members can be good, however, it's known by everyone involved that they are impermanent.
Given that, I'm not even that enthusiastic to join the Adventure. At this point, it just seems like another ship to me. More temporary living. That's not a bad thing, by the way. It just is what it is. I have a pretty good idea of what the gig will be like onboard in terms of musical satisfaction, so, there won't be too many surprises there. I don't have a great desire to visit Europe or the Eastern Caribbean. As long as the ports have good food, fast internet, and hopefully the ability for me to use my cell phone, I'm cool with that. It's kinda funny that what I look for in a port is the ability for me to easily communicate with my friend network back on land even though I don't feel like I have a real place there to call my own. I have tons of friends and support on land, but, I don't have a place to settle there. Basically, I'm onboard to play trombone and…figure shit out….and review movies, I guess.
A musician friend of mine recently resigned from a ship right in the middle of the contract. Had to pay for his own flights back to the States from VERY far away. He'd had enough of the ship life, I guess. Another friend of mine is back on ships again after I thought that he was done. I wonder where I will end up after this experiment/healing process is over? I'm not much closer to figuring that out than I was when I first started on the Majesty, but, I don't have any expectations on myself to make that decision in any kind of time frame.
Most of the communication I do with friends and family back on land is through Facebook. With that program, users post a 'profile picture' to identify themselves to others. Most people use a picture of themselves. I haven't been able to do that for a long time because I just haven't felt like myself for about a year now. So, I've been using pictures of movie characters that I can relate to as my profile pic instead. Hell, just take a look at the background photo of this blog. That just about says it all. Anyway, when I do get back to posting pictures of myself as a Facebook profile pic that will be a big cue that I've gotten some things processed and I feel like myself so that I can move on in a specific direction. Until then, I'll just be out here on my Walkabout continuing the process.
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