I always forget 
what the first few weeks of the Grand World Cruise are like. The days are blitzed with a kind of insanity that is hard to explain unless you’re in the film or theatre business, as those are the only two industries that really have anything remotely equal in mindset. There is so much to do and absolutely not time to do it in. Everyone wants everything at once, and they want it right now. People asking for help with the internet, systems crashing, new people to train, a full re-org of the library to finish so that the new quarterly shipment can be put out, even though half of that shipment has to be put on hold because it’s arrived in paperback format and I’m really not comfortable putting paperbacks in the main collection because they simply disappear. So I have to wait for head office to get back to me to tell me what I’m supposed to do with them.
There are parts of the day that are fantastic and funny, and they lighten your heart. Like when your boss holds a microphone under your nose and makes you sing at the introductory entertainment meeting, and all the guests that you run into that know from years before. Those are all good things. But there are some though that hurt, like when one of those guests is one who was very cruel to you all those years ago, and still is, who takes the opportunity to turn to your co-worker (who barely knows you I might add), and say in a very loud voice that she hopes you’ve loosened up since last time, because you were basically…well, I won’t go there, and then promptly blanks you when you attempt to give her a cheerful hello in the hallway.
Yeah, there are moments that hurt. For the most part though… when the days are that busy they keep your mind occupied, I’ve been running since the time I arrived, and I haven’t stopped.
The nights however, are a completely different story. The nights the loneliness sets in and the exhaustion, and you find yourself jittery, unable to focus on anything, unable to turn your mind off and yet completely unable to figure out what it is your thinking. You feel cut off, isolated, and the only way to break that isolation would be to go out to the bar, or take up one of the many ‘drink’ invitations you’ve been asked to that you’ve endlessly put off, but none of that appeals to you – so you just curl up into bed. And the next day you start again…
I used to say the days, but there are times – right near the beginning of the contract, before things settle in and pick up – when it’s the other way around.