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| I Need My Space |
We are headed for a sea day then the Florida Keys: it's a celebration of the good life and a bygone era.
How Can I Help? Stories and Reflection on Service
On Being Sane in Insane Places-The good voice, the life voice doesn't often speak to you when you have an all you can eat buffet and an open bar.
Ships are the into my sane.Everything changes however once you can be the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it. Simpatico energy is awesome! Working on a ship is the sandpaper of my inner life . It does its work of shaping me into a better person.
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| On an 8 nights Bahamian Cruise |
A Tale of Two Ships
I got the bolders out of the way, Now it's working on the gravel. When you have a four-month contract 7 days a week 24 hours a day—on a ship, you can’t have a bad day. The only easy day was yesterday.
The boulders are the stupid questions like “Do these stairs go up” Do you eat the left overs ?” Is the water in the toilet salt water? How does the ship get its electricity? and my favorite" Where's my wife?"
The gravel are the complainers, the cruise critics. As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can't see how it is. The recent Carnival triumph hoarders, who complained about waiting 4 hours for lobster and chocolate cake—but few waited 4 hours for lobster and cake for an elderly person.
The good voice, the life voice doesn't often speak to you when you have an all you can eat buffet and an open bar. It is our job to make sure the costumes and faces of identity that people wear are on straight. For those people their real problem is they are too busy holding on to their unworthiness. Treating everyone like they are god in drag is the least we can do for these folks. if youw ant to do this, you have to relax and lower your standards-
Cruise ship service is about downplaying the negatives and creating the illusion of perfection. The FOH (front of the house) is all things to all people. Now that I am finally traveling as a guest. I DO like to be served, but invisibly.
Working on floating hotels. you are the United Nations Ambassador,and the whole passenger manifest become non-persons and are granted an ethical equivalent of diplomatic immunity. Anything goes. No judgments. Still, I know I need a vacation from my vacation, when the little things, like elevator behavior, or grab and go at the buffet line start to irk me. It's actually, the tip of the iceberg.
Spending an overnight on land in Central Florida is the best way for me to compare these two mundane worlds. Its a kind of deliverance, a release from the stronghold of the sea, and its own kind of underbelly, wildness and danger, isolated from the gloss and safety of the USA. The next message Ineed is always right where I am-but gravity hurts.
