There comes a point in every contract when you realize you are simply finished, and it doesn’t matter what you do, how many adventures you go on, how many amazing things you see for the rest of your time out, you are simply done. Frazzled. Tapped out.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t many moments of joy in the time that remains in this contract. I still take joy in looking out the window and seeing the sun glint off a perfectly smooth expanse of water in glacier bay, I still look up when someone cries “whale” (though there are usually too many people crowded near the window for me to see anything!), I still relish in the fact that we’ve had the best weather this particular week that Alaska has seen in months (honestly, we’re walking around in shorts and t-shirts, this is very nearly unheard of).
But at the base of it all, you do get tired. Tired of the constant noise in the hallways at 1am that makes you feel like you’re living in a drunken, hyperactive college dormitory, tired of the emergency pages at 6:30 in the morning that wake you up an hour early and make it impossible to go back to sleep. Tired of the endless questions from guests that are always the same from week to week no matter how many times you’ve answered them. The constant smile becomes a wear and you start to feel the strain of maintaining it. You get up, you go to work, you come home.
And you realize that no matter how much you adore your job, it’s quite simply time for a vacation. For familiar faces and a bed that doesn’t move. For windows in your bedroom, uninterrupted sleep and a shower that you don’t have to worry about flooding your bathroom floor.
I do love my job, but even someone who loves their job has their off days, and sometimes out here, near the end of my contract span, I get so tired that I feel like I’m drowning even trying to tread water.
Home is going to feel very good this time around….