Settling into the Second Week

I have never really been good with new social situations. It usually will take me some time to get comfortable somewhere before I can really start to connect with people and make friends. This aspect of me goes back as far as I can remember. I recall the social anxiety way back when I first went to summer camp in first grade. I guess that’s a natural thing for a kid that young to feel but I’ve never gotten over it; I guess it’s something that needs work. On top of that, I really don’t like group conversations. Everyone is always stepping on each other’s toes. Two people inevitably start talking at once and then there is this standoff. Who speaks louder? Who has participated more in the conversation so far? Who will say the more interesting thing? Who is liked more? Our brains process all these questions subconsciously in an instant, and somehow the group always seems to pick the same person. Sometimes I get picked, sometimes I don’t, either way I’ve never liked this contest of social dominance.

So, social anxieties and gripes aside, things are slowly starting to open up for me on this ship. I’m meeting new people every day, some of them are nice, some of them are cold, and some of them can’t speak a word of a language I can understand. I’m lucky that everyone wears nametags, because there is no way I could keep track of all of the names, it took me a week and a half to get everyone in the bands’ names down.

Tuesday I got off the boat and skyped with a lovely lady back home. Something we spoke about really got me thinking. A year ago, I was lost. Stuck in the post college malaise, I had no idea what to do or where to go. I stayed around Baltimore because I had friends there, and while I had a job, I still had no forward momentum. I was unhappy; I wasn’t learning anything except how to appease people with anger management issues and was not being challenged in the way I wanted to be. I eventually quit my job and was unemployed afterwards for longer than I’d like to admit. Being lost is a scary thing; every choice I made seemed so monumental, like the rest of my existence hinged on such trite decisions. Without direction, I fell into a depression, withdrew from the people who cared about me and developed some self-destructive habits.

College graduates get a lot of pressure put on them after graduation. It’s like people are telling us “Ok, you’re educated, now keep getting educated or contribute dammit!” Maybe this is why so many people are stuck doing things they don’t enjoy. We’ve spent their entire lives being indoctrinated by the education system, being told that at the finish line, there is a big pearly job with a fat paycheck. We aren’t taught to figure out what we want, and when it’s all over we’re stuck, lost, without purpose or direction.

Here is different though. I still don’t know what I want, let alone how to get it, but that lost feeling is gone. Maybe it’s because I’m so far out of my comfort zone that I don’t have time to think about things like that. Maybe it’s because I know that I’m heading towards some enigmatic goal. Or maybe I’ve just grown up a bit in the past year. Whatever it is, things don’t seem so urgent now. I have my whole life to figure things out, and if I focus on figuring myself out right now, all of those things in the future will come more easily. This relaxed attitude could be coming from me being in the middle of the ocean, but its clarity that I have not had since much simpler times.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this little rant, and I sure as hell don’t have an answer to the problems I’m talking about. I guess I just wanted to share what worked for me. I got up and did something that I had never done before, something that would challenge me and put me off balance. This place has definitely done both of those things, and while I can’t say that I’m happy yet, I can say that I feel at peace with just letting things happen.

Existential rambling aside, I got back on the boat and rehearsed for my second show with MA. I already knew the material pretty well, so the rehearsal was just a bit of polishing here and there. The first set went well and the band went down to the crew bar for a beverage before the second (we’re not really supposed to do that, don’t tell anyone ok?) When my bandmates started going on about politics, I half-heartedly gave my two cents and zoned out until we had to play again. Something fantastic happened during that second show. As I said in an earlier post, near the end of his show, MA likes to just take requests and the band makes up accompaniments on the fly. He made the decision to close with Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You, and we just nailed it. There was a standing ovation and MA was all smiles. The crowd demanded another song so we whipped out Heard it Through the Grapevine, which used to be my favorite song when I was much younger, and just killed it. It was a rewarding feeling, the first great show of my contract. After the show I was beat, so I went back to my room and watched some Breaking Bad before passing out.

Wednesday was a very light day. I had a lot of time to get off the boat and explore Cozumel. I wandered into the wrong bar and was approached by a prostitute for the first time in my life. She looked like she had once been beautiful, but now had a hollow look in her eye and her entirety was tinged with artificialness. I said “No Gracias” five or six times before I had to just walk away, the whole interaction made me feel dirty and I didn’t even touch her. I have no idea how some men can even humor the idea of paying for sex. Once back on the boat I had a few hours of free time, I ate dinner with a few overly made-up dancers and a production singer, we made small talk and they seem like a cool bunch.  

At night we had Karaoke. The ship has a Slavic sound man who is absolutely hilarious. I am the only member of the band who wears a headset during the karaoke sets, and he talks to me through them, tell me what the next song is and so forth. This set however, he was quite talkative, commenting on the singers during their performances and just making general wise cracks. Towards the end of the night, he got the whole backstage crew into the booth, and they were having a blast trying to distract me while I played. It made the set much more enjoyable than the karaoke sets normally are, and had me laughing all night. Luckily, I don’t think it affected my playing save for one or two quick moments.

That night, there was a party for the crew in the ship disco; it was 80s night. I don’t really like dance parties, but I went just to see what it was like for a half hour or so. I had a few superficial conversations and had a drink, I don’t think it’s really my scene but I’m glad I went. I met a few new people who seem nice and I’m starting to figure out how to break the ice with people on the ship better.

Things are gradual here. It’s a difficult environment to live in. My friend (redacted) and I spoke about this last summer. It’s hard to work with the people you live with. It’s nice to be able to go home to your friends and not talk about work or your co-workers. Here, being on a ship is what we do; it connects us and forces us to be together always. Sometimes that can be nice, but other times I just want to be alone because of it. Maybe I will grow more accustomed, but I have been in work environments like this before, and it did not get easier then. I’m trying as hard as I can to keep an open mind about the whole thing, but it’s impossible to not apply my past experiences to this one. Things are things, they fluctuate between bad and good pretty regularly, and I think that emotional intensity is a product of being in such a confined environment.

Much love to everyone at home, you are in my thoughts.