Accountability: July 2021

Hello and goodbye to July 2021. I don’t know how time flies by so quickly. It seems to be true that time goes faster as you get older and I’m not into it.

Somehow July has come and gone. It’s been a busy but good month. We started the month in Scotland with my husbands family and have ended it in the US with my family. There are so many challenges that I had never thought of with an international marriage – but I had never even thought of a pandemic. It’s definitely made our particular way of living challenging throughout this pandemic. It is making me grateful for any bit of normality that we get from time to time.

What’s happening? Well, not a whole lot while at the same time a ton. We celebrated my husband’s birthday and my grandma’s this month. Next month will see one of my cousin’s getting married. And, we are doing some home improvement projects.

The Necessary Gripe About Pandemic-y Things:

The hubby is home from work for a little bit longer. Definitely focusing on enjoying our time together while we have it. We really relied on me being able to go sail with him on the ship for at least part of his contract. It really helped to break up the time apart. I hate not being able to go with him to the ship, even if it’s just for a little bit.

The ship he is scheduled to return to is planning on having passengers back onboard part way through his contract. I’ve thought about going to sail as a passenger and then we could at least see each other for dinner and lunch – but, apparently crew are only allowed in guest areas right now unless it specifically relates to their function onboard, and I wouldn’t be able to go in crew areas as a passenger, so we still wouldn’t really be able to see each other.

This particularly annoys me as he’ll be onboard over Christmas and New Years. I’m sure on future Accountability posts I’ll write about this particular annoyance more. It’s something that’s been on my mind. Where we are in the US (Vermont) things are largely back to normal. I think it’s how normal things feel here that make it so frustrating when there are restrictions like that preventing me from spending Christmas or New Years with my husband. Alas, I understand we’re still in a pandemic. I get that. And, while I can say, “this is what I signed up for” – none of us signed up for a damn pandemic. Are we dealing with it? Yes, of course. It’s the cards that life has currently dealt the world. Am I grateful for our health and that he still has a job? Yes, of course. But, part of the reason that he works on cruise ships versus having another job at sea has been so that I can visit him while he’s onboard. So, this is expressing frustration over that a year and a half into the pandemic.

Note for those that are sticklers for the rules: If I was onboard as a passenger my husband would discuss it with the Captain ahead of time and get it approved in advance that we could for instance be able to have dinner together or go ashore together. The idea of me going onboard as a passenger isn’t to skirt around any rules and we would never do anything to put my husbands career at risk and/or violate CDC rules.

Other Things On My Mind:

I’ve been thinking a lot about career like things. I applied for a job onboard this month – it was my hail-mary pass of jobs, the “I might as well go for it before I close this chapter” job – and I never heard anything back.

It’s been exciting to watch people go back to work onboard, but also a little bit hard. Not even remotely as hard as it’s been over the years to sail onboard a ship with people actively doing not-as-good-as-I-would-have at their job knowing it’s one I didn’t get, but still hard. I don’t know how I would explain to my younger self that it’s not about how hard you work or how good you are at your job but instead it’s about how you play the career game. It’s a hard truth to swallow that – at least with giant corporations – doing a good job doesn’t really matter. I’m going to be quite honest, I played the career game really poorly.

I try not to say too much of that kind of thing on here. That same cruise line still employs my husband, during normal times they allow me to sail with him, and on their ships I got to see the world. I don’t want to bite the hand that feeds me (literally). But, especially when you are at a career transitional time in your life somethings are hard. On the scale of things I can’t complain – they’ve treated my husband well in his career, treat me well as his spouse, and last year when I was onboard during the cruise ship layup the onboard management did everything they could to have me onboard with my husband as long as they could. I’m thankful and grateful in so many ways.

This isn’t one of those, “I’m not happy where I ended up” kind of scenarios. If I hadn’t played it the way I did I might never have met my husband. My life is good. I really shouldn’t complain.

I have quite a few friends in transition mode right now too due to the pandemic and it all feels a little weird. Like, “is that time in our life really over?”

On the super positive side of things, I’ve got some other career and life aspirations that I’m working on. I’m grateful for those opportunities and for having a partner that supports those aspirations even if they’re a bit non-traditional and require some elbow grease.

I’ve hung onto some version of hope for so long that I will work onboard again – it’s always felt like unfinished business I guess – that it’s weird to let that part of my life go.

Time to move on with the future though, in some way or another.

Where Are We Going?:

You’ll notice that I’ve removed the “Where Are We Going” bit from this post. I created the “Where Are We Going” section last year while we were on the ship during the initial cruise ship layup caused by the pandemic. At that point where we were going was so up in the air it was hard to keep track of.

I’ve decided that while I love writing this blog and I enjoy these monthly accountability posts, I don’t need the whole world to know where we are and what our travel plans are. If there are big updates – like we opt to move to Hawaii or something – I’ll jot that down. If someday we find ourselves on a World Cruise again and we are bopping along from country to country together, I’ll add it back in. But, for now, I’m going to keep things a bit more generic. Instead I think I might toss in a brief synopsis of:

Where Have We Been?:

Well, this month started in Scotland. We also spent a week in Southampton, England. For Stuart’s job he’s required to do certain courses – think of them as continuing education courses, things that keep him up to date on new technologies, as well as staying current with his knowledge of firefighting and things like that (this is such a super simplification of these courses). This particular course happened to be down in Southampton so I went along with him. It was so much fun to see all the cruise ships coming in and out of port! Ironically, I’m not allowed to be on those particular ships as I’m not a UK resident. Go figure.

Goals for July:

Anyways, my goals for July were met with mixed reviews. Let’s see how I did…

• Film and post a YouTube video. Apparently I can start monetizing that once I get 1,000 subscribers. I currently have 67. Feel free to pop over to YouTube and subscribe to me (and then also give me some ideas of new videos to post!)
  • While I technically filmed it in June, it was posted in July. Questions About Crew Life with my special guests stars is live now.
  • Also, subscriber count is up to 83, so just a few days before that can be monetized. (Ha!)
• Post 6 blog posts
  • When was the last time I actually did this?
  • It’s actually not too bad with 4 cruise posts, last months accountability plus today’s.
  • I’ve been working on updating old posts with better SEO practices. This increases how often my blog pops up when people Google certain things, and increases my overall readership. So, less new posts right now but doing some other stuff to increase the blogs presence.
• Keep in touch with my family in Vermont better while I am in Scotland
  • Currently in Vermont, so doing well at this.
• Walk with friends
  • Oh, got to improve on this. The hubby and I have been walking almost daily though, so that’s quite nice.
• Read books!
  • Yes! I finished one and am onto another. I’ve missed how fun it is to be transported through a book. The only thing missing is a hammock. Think I might need to invest in that for next summer.

Goals For August:

I know August is going to be a busy month of things but I don’t want to lose all momentum so, here it is:

• Film and post one YouTube video plus post one fun time-lapse video from years past.
  • The video is going to be about World Cruises 2023. My World Cruises 2022 video is at 6,600 views…so give the people what they want I guess?
• Post 4 blog posts
  • We’re going to aim for once a week.
• Keep in touch with out of town friends
• Walk with/make time for friends that are local
• Keep reading!