Accountability: March 2020

I am a 31 year-old, largely unemployed weird version of a stay at home wife. I am currently sailing with him on the cruise ship he is working on. There are no guests on board and we are re-positioning between Australia and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. At present we are about five days away from South Africa where we will stop and refuel.

My monthly accountability posts are in an effort to keep me accountable as I work towards different goals.

This month has been ridiculous. At the beginning of this month we were in New Zealand and by the end of it we were going to be in Sri Lanka. Plans have certainly changed. I don’t have stories of social distancing at grocery stores and can’t relate to the situation that people are experiencing on land. We have had a few not so great things – like for instance for my birthday I don’t get birthday cake. 🙁 It’s not considered “essential” so birthday cakes have been scrapped from the shipboard budget. We did improvise however and get fancy hot chocolate with whipped cream for my “birthday cake”!

One of my goals is to do something towards getting a job. As the jobs that I’m applying for are jobs onboard I did not think that it was a great time to apply for new onboard jobs when the company is currently trying to navigate disembarking passengers, disembarking crew, and adjusting contracts accordingly for crew in an ever changing situation. 

I also failed pretty hard at my French lessons. As we ended up spending the majority of this month at sea and the internet onboard is fairly terrible and expensive doing French lessons created more stress than value. I also typically download movies in French using NetFlix but with the internet as it is it would have been way too expensive to pay for the WiFi to download anything from NetFlix. I will keep this goal on here though and hopefully I will find ways in the next month or so to work on it.

• Revised goal: 15 French lessons per month + conversations with the French speakers onboard + watch one movie in French per week. 
  • I failed at this. See all the reasons above. I did have some conversations with those that speak French onboard. There is one crew that I am going to teach her how to read music/play piano and she is helping me with French.

• Post every Tuesday and Thursday, also at least one Saturday post.
  • Success!

• Do one thing per month towards getting a job with follow-up action. (Example: I can update my resume all day but if I don’t send it out it won’t do any good just sitting on my computer’s hard drive).
  • I have the information ready to send in but am waiting at least until the rest of the passengers are disembarked from our sister ships.

• Make sure even while traveling I talk to my mom, my brother, and my grandmother at least once a week. That means if I call and they don’t answer it doesn’t count. Actually talk to them.
  • Not being able to go ashore has made this a more expensive prospect. I talk to my mom over text on WhatsApp nearly daily (as this is free to crew) and I have been calling from the ships phone every week or so.

• Check in with my 5 main closest friends at least every other week.
  • They have been checking in with me! I am so grateful for wonderful friends that have been reaching out to make sure that Stuart and I are still healthy and well on board. 

• Go for a walk on deck at least every other day while on the ship.
  • Still successful on this. Some days it is longer than others, but I am making a point to get myself and Stuart outside.

• Read at least two books.
  • Finished one book and a bit more than halfway through the next.

This month for everyone has been crazy. This month in both the books I have been reading and the podcasts I am listening to one quote from Theodore Roosevelt keeps coming up:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

It’s easy to pass judgment on others, until we are in that same arena though we cannot know the challenges they are facing. Everything in the world right now is a bit crazy, I am going to work hard to not pass judgment on those facing situations that I cannot fully understand.

With how crazy March was I suppose…. let’s see what happens in April.