What I Miss About Working on a Cruise Ship

This might be a short list.

Just kidding. Its been so long since I was out on a ship that I forget exactly what it was that turned me off from it. I remember I felt isolated, as if, for instance, I was out in the middle of the ocean for months at a time. I felt trapped, as if, for instance, I had to adhere to a 24/7 schedule on a ship out in the middle of the ocean for months at a time.

But since I last went out I had and beat cancer, found a purty girlfriend, conducted a national broadway tour, established career connections in Chicago and New York, and grew up in other ways, too. When last I was on I was still unsatisfied or confused with my direction in life and love and I was mostly just a kid. I flirted with everything that moved and spent too much money. Come to think of it…that all sounds like it was a lot of fun, doesn’t it?

Despite my bitching and moaning all these years, there are some things that I miss about living on a cruise ship. I’m looking forward to getting back to these things in a month when I go out on a guest performer contract.

Reading a Book On Deck – Reading on the promenade, sitting in a chair and staring out at the water subtly rising and falling. I didn’t have a computer or anything when last I was on a ship, and had been naive enough to think that I might be playing piano a lot. I had generally very little to do, and I spent a lot of it reading on deck.

Getting a Tan

Always Being 10 Minutes From a Beach – and a new beach every day no less!

Desserts – Here’s an interesting story. When I was working on a cruise ship in 2004 I had cancer and I didn’t know it. I only found out later, after I’d gotten off the ship. I had been losing a lot of weight unexpectedly while on the ship as an unknown symptom of the tumor that was growing inside me. That sounds like a drag, and it was – BUT – I was constantly eating desserts on the ship and I never gained a pound! It was so great! I mean, if I had to get sick, at least I got to gorge on the chocolate pastries before I found out. My only regret is that I didn’t stuff myself more! If only I’d known that there was no way to gain weight! What a silver lining!

Top Deck at Night – Cruise ships are always in beautiful areas with amazing weather. When the area they are in becomes a wee-bit chilly, they relocate to a better area. It’s a great system. And it means that virtually any time you’re on a cruise ship, it’ll be nice enough at night to go up to the top deck without a jacket and sit and think. You can’t see the stars very well because of all of the ships lights, but its still night to stand out in the night and stare out into the black, feeling the big ship move gently underneath you.

Friends – I miss the friends I met on my ship. I still talk to a lot of them and I think about them all the time. Something about the confined space and the confined amount of time together incubates friendships faster than the real world. You know people short periods of time and you get to know them really well. Like summer camp, as L. puts it. I don’t mean to imply that this new ship I’m going on will have my old friends on it, or that I’ll make friends like that again – just that I enjoyed the time I spent with new friends on my last ship.