This…is an odd date on the calendar for me. Not so much that there is anything really important about Jan 4th; it’s just another day on the calendar for most. But for a lot of ship people? This day marks the start of first contracts of the New Year.
All around the world, thousands of us that would normally be hauling luggage through airports and kissing loved ones goodbye and preparing to go away for months on end are…not. We’re home instead, in my case sitting at a computer watching the rain and trying to sort out a rather mixed up mess of emotions that range the gambit from…well, I’ll give you a small sample of my head this morning:
I’m glad to be home and safe with people that care about me!
I miss it though…
But I was miserable and lonely so often! How can I miss it?
But it wasn’t so bad…
Maybe I should make those cookies today…
Was last year the last wheels up day for me?
hey, it’s one thing to choose to stop traveling for a living, it’s another to have it taken from me, I didn’t agree to this! I was supposed to quit on my own terms!
I’m so glad to not be going anywhere!
Wow…look at the rain
And that’s all in the last five minutes. Quite the mental rollercoaster.
I am the first to say that not going anywhere is necessarily a bad thing. I would much much rather be here, at home, with my little bubble of people, than I would be on a ship with thousands of strangers right now. And the truth is, I was looking for a long break from the job anyway – the hours were/are long and grinding, you often don’t feel like a person, there is no real “going home” at the end of the day and your personal world shrinks to the size of a small dorm room crammed full of luggage in every cupboard.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t mourn the fact that as of today, it has been almost a year since the start of our last contract. It doesn’t mean that I don’t mourn the loss of an industry that – while insanely difficult most of the time – has supported us well for over a decade. It doesn’t mean that I’m not having moments of being reminded of just how scary a time this is for myself, my loved ones, my fellow shipmates.
I’m sure all these feelings will sort themselves out and pass on eventually. We will sit and watch the rain and play silly board games and talk when we need to and allow for silence when there is nothing to be said .I might just bake those cookies finally. And I’ll probably finish my Christmas Mouse pattern.
But I’ve learned that if you don’t acknowledge the tangled mess of emotions in your heart it only gets more tangled…so right now I have to acknowledge that I feel a bit like I’ve been pitched headlong into another dimension…
One that (I suppose thankfully), doesn’t involve airports…