There are three types of people in the world, those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea
I feel I should apologise for the lapse in updates this season. I would say it’s because there has been nothing going on that’s worth writing about, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. While Alaska doesn’t present a great deal of variation from week to week (why do you think we nicknamed it the ‘ground hog’ run), but there is definitely a lot going on. The thing is, if I wrote about most of it, it would come across as a rant, and I don’t like to use these pages to vent; and even if I did – most of what’s been happening is so closely related to work that it would be only interesting if you’re ship-side yourself.
In truth though, a lot of the silence has come about from simply not knowing where to start. One of the things that is sometimes thrown into stark reality for me is just how different my world is out here from the world of ‘normal’ people. A colleague of mine said tonight that out here even the moon seems to be full four or five times a month, time flows differently and whenever I sit down to do something I find that something else has come along and pulled away. And before we’re fully aware of it, it’s been four months and I’ve forgotten so many things about the outside world that I usually have to make apologies to a lot of people.
Still, the days keep tumbling by, as the season goes on we’re again starting to enter into ‘oil and water’ cruising, though it feels earlier this year. The patrons are getting once again more demanding and less sophisticated, acknowledgement of formal nights is becoming nearly a thing of the past except for amongst the staff. Things are slowly winding down. In a turn of events I didn’t quite expect, the library has gone from about 200 checkouts a week to under 100, I’m not sure if it’s the unexpectedly nice weather that’s stopping people from reading or if it’s just that this is a different crowd. That said, I do enjoy not having to straighten the books every hour.
None the less, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m relatively certain it’s not an oncoming train…