{"id":5694,"date":"2020-03-26T08:10:19","date_gmt":"2020-03-26T15:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=5694"},"modified":"2020-03-26T08:10:19","modified_gmt":"2020-03-26T15:10:19","slug":"stardate-03252020-news-from-aboard-03-25-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=5694","title":{"rendered":"Stardate #03252020 \u2013 News from Aboard \u2013 [03\/25\/2020]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Once again there were hundreds of people around her. But [she] was alone\u2026
\n~ Pick Me Up At Peggy\u2019s Cove
\n<\/em>
\nStrange does not begin to explain the atmosphere on the ship while we\u2019re stuck out here. It really doesn\u2019t. It never really leaves our minds how lucky we are, how fortunate we are to be safe among friends with access to resources that many on land can only dream of just at the moment.<\/p>\n

I mean for heaven\u2019s sake we have a hot tub!<\/p>\n

But under all that there\u2019s still the pulsing knowledge that we don\u2019t know when we\u2019re going to go home. I was talking to a barista this morning who has a three year old son at home, and she\u2019s both desperate to go home to him and terrified to leave because she doesn\u2019t want to risk him getting ill, and because she\u2019s the only current working member of her family. Without her? How would they eat? And she\u2019s far from the only one.<\/p>\n

It makes one think really. All those numbers on paper that the government is so quick to slash red lines through? All those nameless corporations that everyone is so quick to blame (and don\u2019t get me wrong, the mentality of a lot of big corporations is<\/em> to blame for a lot of problems in this world); those numbers and statistics are real people, they\u2019re lives. Real lives. Lives that have been totally upended and left to drift about until someone tells them its safe to return. There\u2019s so much emotion out here that everything ends up feeling slightly numb.<\/p>\n

For the most part, everyone is also fighting boredom. It sounds nuts doesn\u2019t it? Here we are on a ship, with all these activities planned to keep us out of trouble, and no one feels like doing<\/em> anything. We\u2019re all still just, processing. Waiting for someone to tell us what to do next.<\/p>\n

And as for me personally? Well, I never thought I could feel claustrophobic on a ship built to hold over 1,500 people. This morning the knowledge that I cannot leave this vessel<\/em> even if I wanted to (we\u2019re 20 miles off the coast of anywhere, there\u2019s not anywhere to go!), hit me hard. It\u2019s hard to explain what it feels like to suddenly realize that you are surrounded by endless miles of water and the end of your accessible world is the railings surrounding the promenade deck. It\u2019s a creepy intense feeling that borders just on the edge of a panic attack before you reel it back in again.<\/p>\n

Thankfully for me, we do have access to the pool (I know, a luxury that is definitely not on many people\u2019s available list right now), so I was able to spend a little while flat on my back in the water, with nothing in my ears but the sound of my own breathing. And that helps. That always helps.<\/p>\n

So, we keep on keeping busy. And allow ourselves the bad days, because we haven\u2019t even been out here a week and some of us are already starting to go stir crazy.<\/p>\n

Every night at (almost) exactly 7:30pm, there\u2019s a low rumbling ghostly whistle that echoes back and forth across the waves from ship to ship as every vessel anchored in the area sounds its horn in unison. That gives me hope, that sound. It gives me an anchor. It reminds me that no matter how alone Amras and I may feel out here, we aren\u2019t. A few miles across the water are 600+ other people (per ship), looking back and us, looking back at them, wondering the same things\u2026<\/p>\n

We\u2019re still here, those horns say, we\u2019ll get through this.<\/p>\n

We will all<\/em> get through this.<\/p>\n

(As always, standard disclaimers apply, please check the “disclaimers” section at the top of the blog page for details)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once again there were hundreds of people around her. But [she] was alone\u2026 ~ Pick Me Up At Peggy\u2019s Cove Strange does not begin to explain the atmosphere on the ship while we\u2019re stuck out here. It really doesn\u2019t. It … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[109,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hotel-california-layup-updates","category-below-the-waterline"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-1tQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5695,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5694\/revisions\/5695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}