It is absolutely no secret how much I hate flying. If mankind were meant to fly, the S/he would have granted us wings. It is not so much the concept of shooting through the sky in a metal tube that unnerves me; it’s the undeniable fact that I am trapped in a giant metal tube that is shooting across the sky. If I think about that too much I go insane, hence why I have started investing in onboard internet wherever possible, the $20 cost is worth it for my piece of mind, at least as long as the battery power on my laptop holds out, which, if I’m only doing word processing and not something like watching a movie, is usually a decent amount of time.
It feels like a lot longer than yesterday since I left the ship. But debark is debark, it’s always a bit surreal. You’re walking out your cabin door at the same time that your replacement is walking in most of the time. There’s a flurry of trying to get everyone’s luggage in the right place, and by the end of the day it feels like your fingers may never work properly again as a result of carrying said luggage to the north pole and back (not literally obviously). And then bang, you’re in a metal tube flying you home. Somewhere in between worlds…like you were never there at all.
IT’s eerie in some ways, knowing that your shipboard life is continuing merrily along without you. The machine goes on, you change the gears out every few months when they get too worn through. At least I left my replacement with an office that was in good shape. I got my final report card, the written comments were good, but standard. It was what my supervisor actually saidto me that mattered,
Shaughnessy, I have seen you up there, it is busy. I mean insanely busy, and I know that because I had to do it once – please don’t ever get sick again! But seriously, you go above and beyond. The company will never know what they did when they got rid of the internet managers, because all they know, and all they care about, is that they saved the room and they’re making the same amount of money they were before. And it was foolish of them and it wasn’t fair to you, and we all know that, the only reason they never will is because we have exceptional librarians like you who stepped up and did the job even though it wasn’t fair to you and it never will be. You do so much more than we could ever expect you to or would ever ask you to. They may never appreciate it, but it’s very very important to me that you know that we do.
I almost cried. You don’t get that kind of appreciation very often in any line of work, let alone this one.
But freya does it ever feel good to be heading home…