Diary

Rolling the Dice

After reading every article I could get my hands on and listening to the valid worries of my partner, Dan, I  am flying to Buenos Aires today  on a Seabourn cruise to Manaus ( or maybe on to Miami?) maybe followed by Lisbon to Rome via the Canary Islands ( or maybe not?),  depending  on even more factors than anyone knows right now. 

The chances of this whole trip going off without a hitch are probably fairly slim.at this point, I don’t even know exactly where I am going.  Can I keep myself well?  Will the ship end up quarantined?  Will one of the cases be me?  If not, what will my situation be as a well passenger?  Will the ship be able to make all our ports, or will some of them close to travelers?  Will any of my flights be canceled?  Will I have difficulty getting back home?  

All legitimate concerns, but I note that I am very far into a list before asking the biggie: will I die?  Sure, I have been hearing a lot about what a geriatric case I am at 70, and I wonder whether pneumonia twice in the past 30 years and well-controlled borderline asthma triggered by allergies would fall in the category of heath-compromising conditions. All of this factors into how serious getting Covid 19 could be. 

It has always worked well for me in life to catastrophize and then walk myself back. Yes, it is within the realm of possibility that I will die in some woefully inadequate hospital in an out-of-the-way place , unattended by anyone I love because they can’t get there or are forbidden to see me. Yes, my pathetic casket will make the mournful journey back to a place that in retrospect I should never have left. Yes, my very full life will be tragically cut short a bit at 70,  and some people will be very sad.

Or…

Let’s dial it back.  I will wash my hands a lot, monitor touching my face, wipe  surfaces around me with disinfectant cloths, avoid  hand contact, use tissue for doorknobs, avoid shared objects, and on and on. I have a pretty good chance, doing all this, of not contracting the virus at all—or not spreading it to others if I already have it asymptomatically. I recognize that sanitary precautions are not just to protect myself but to protect others from me, and I take that obligation equally seriously. 

And if I do become symptomatic, I believe I have a very good chance of having a mild case. I am in good physical shape. I have a good immune system, measured by how rarely I get sick from anything going around.  I just don’t see myself as frail or compromised in any way whatsoever. I am 70 going on 55, and everyone who knows me is nodding right now.

As for trip disruption, well, so what?  If one isn’t prepared for the unexpected in this beautiful adventure called life, better stay home. If we miss or substitute ports,  things just happen a little differently than predicted. I am prepared for extra lectures if we have unexpected sea days.  If  I get quarantined in my room, I have brought two creative projects with me and will take advantage of the lack of distractions.  If I get sick, I will tough it out and trust in the medical care I receive. If the ship gets quarantined, every botched incident so far with other ships has improved my chances it will be handled better. If my onward travel plans get disrupted, I will deal with it. If I end up having to stay ashore somewhere unexpected,  I will make the best of it.

The worst case?  I end up as part of a deluge of patients that hospitals are woefully underprepared for.  Sounds like what I can expect if I stay home.  

For me this really boils down to one thing:  if I stay home, I am not being true to myself. It’s the old “what do I want on my tombstone?” argument. Nothing about staying home out of fear, that’s for sure. Not “She panicked and missed out” or  “She  avoided risk at all costs.”  

There’s sometimes a difference between being the best steward of our health and the best steward of our lives. To be the best steward of only our health, the answer is clear: cancel everything and self-isolate.  But life is so rich and ultimately so finite that embracing the risk and venturing out is how we best use the precious gift we have been given of being here now—the only time we have. 

I am not venturing into West Africa during an Ebola outbreak. I am not going to a country torn by civil war or likely to want to ransom or decapitate me for being American. I have done a clear eyed risk assessment and made the choice that feels most in keeping with promises I have made to myself about the kind of person I am going to be and the kind of life I am going to live.

Also part of being me is honoring commitments. I contracted with Seabourn for these assignments, and I should live up to that if I can. Being worried about contagion doesn’t seem like a good enough reason to leave them to explain  to passengers that there won’t be any lectures.  I am the kind of person who shows up.

So there you have it. I am going to live up to my vow to myself to finish my circumnavigation of South America ( the part between Rio and the mouth of the Amazon). From there, I hope to fulfill my promise to myself to get back to the Canaries as soon as possible (http://www.laurelcorona.com/do-overs/ ).  Maybe in the cards, maybe not this year. But most important, I am going to live up  to my biggest promise: to like,  respect, and be proud of  the person who looks back at me in the mirror. 

Fingers  crossed and flying out. I’ll keep you posted!

 

“You know, I used to hate goodbyes. Whenever I taught my last class or when we moved to a new city, those final goodbyes used to wrench my heart. But then I realized that there is no goodbye for much of what we do. When I left one place, I took everything I’d learned before and all the good ideas that were tucked into my brain and all the good friends that were tucked in my heart, and I brought it all forward with me — and it became part of what I did next.”   -Elizabeth Warren

Thank you, Elizabeth Warren, for saying so beautifully what passages in life can mean. Goodbyes can elicit a gamut of reactions —pain, relief, or sheer astonishment  at finding oneself actually in that moment where life changes. Turning away after a car disappears around the corner, or a loved one disappears into the crowd at the station, somehow the air feels different and the world is tilting slightly.  When we’re the one inside the car, or settling into the train or airplane seat, we’re processing the goodbye too, though it always feels a little different when we’re doing the leaving rather than the staying.

Goodbyes are doorways through which we pass from the predictable to the unpredictable. Maybe that’s why they are so much harder for some people. It can be hard to have Warren’s confidence that the love and learning we’ve amassed will be all we need to launch ourselves into the unknown. It’s all that much harder when we don’t have much practice surviving tough goodbyes.

We stay when we should leave, we tolerate when we should protest, we shrink when we should surge. We avoid the  end of a  bad marriage, a toxic friendship, a soul- crushing or dead end job, but when finally we make a move, we discover that just the act of leaving has added immeasurable clarity and strength to the person we are  I’m not in favor of practicing goodbye by throwing out what’s working, or arguing that the agony of losing loved ones is a good thing,  but surviving tough goodbyes is one of the  best life-building practices I know.

I have survived everything life has thrown my way, and I have managed in the end—not always easily and not always quickly— to thrive. Who I am right now, as Warren says,  gets rolled into how I perceive and handle whatever comes next. I may not be thrilled to face a new challenge,  but I trust myself to make a good call each step of the way—maybe in hindsight not necessarily the best option, but one that got me through.

The answer to life’s challenges can’t be to avoid goodbyes. It starts with trusting hello.

I’m sitting here in the dark with the lights of San Diego glittering through my balcony window. It is quiet, so quiet, with only the occasional soft rumble of a plane coming in to land at Lindbergh Field.

It is the first night I have slept in my own bed in two years.  When I began “living travelly” I had renters, so when I was in San Diego between assignments, I stayed with Dan in his condo around the corner in the same building.  I got so used to walking by my door i hardly felt any association with the place at all.  For the last few months, my son Ivan has been staying in my condo, and though I have gone in and out, mostly in search of clean clothes since I got home three weeks ago, it wasn’t until he moved out today that I have been able to reclaim my bed.

It feels good, just as I remembered it. My perfect mattress, lovely bed linens, and enough fluffy pillows to make a nice backrest.  I feel like the queen of the nest again.

Well, sort of.  With all Ivan’s things out, the place looks kind of stark and dull. With his energy gone, it just feels kind of funny.  Not mine. Not yet.

I have been toying with the idea of leaving San Diego, as you will already know if you read my blog, but I had the passing thought tonight that this is really pretty nice.  Maybe I could get used to it. I won’t have renters again, most likely, because I don’t have any assignments of more than two months this year, and longer breaks between them, but also because  I want to try to be more “all-in” when I am here.

“Home is where the anchor drops,” one of my favorite t-shirts proclaims, and it is such a blessing to feel at home wherever I am.  I’m leaving again in about three weeks, so I won’t have a chance for any lengthy tests of whether the return to life as it used to be will be satisfying enough. I’ve never gone back to anything I can think of, so I can’t predict.

I do know it will be nice (and easier) to have all my possessions handy, and I am looking forward to opening my closet door tomorrow and see choices of clothes and shoes I haven’t worn for a long time, and to have my blender and coffee maker handy. I also cherish my privacy, something you lose when you are perching with others, and I love that I can make all the decisions about my space now.

But it won’t be the way it used to be, not fully. The biggest challenge over the next nine months or so is going to be living without a car. I haven’t had a car for two years now, but I also haven’t been home for four months either, as I will be doing when I get home in early May from one assignment and don’t have another until early September. I suspect being car-less will get old pretty quick.  But I have done fine For the last two years, so  I will manage somehow.

My original plan was to buy a cute little sports car when I got back from the Australia/New Zealand gig, which would be now. I can picture myself in a jaunty little coupe with the top down, and isn’t one of the privileges of reaching my age to be able not to be responsible and practical about every last thing?

However, if I end up moving to Canada, a sports car would be a bad choice.  If I move to a city like Montreal, having a car at all might be a problem. My goal now is to make it to the election before deciding what car to get.  I thought about taking over a lease until then, but really, doing without will be an interesting challenge. And if you see a photo of me with a cute little convertible in a year or so, it will mean my country has been rescued from the menace it faces now, and I won’t have felt the need to leave.

But for now, I’m staying right here, in a bed that feels familiar, in a life that feels partly familiar.  In the morning I will be slightly astonished, I think, at the  magnitude of all that has happened since I last woke up here, and I will begin trying to feel at home.

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Something interesting happened to me on this last cruise assignment.  We had the typical fairly rough crossing the first time I sailed the Tasman Seas between Australia and New Zealand; In the past, i would have just slapped on a scopolamine patch for seasickness, but for some reason I decided to wait to see if I really needed it.  For the next few days I totally forgot about it and was fine the whole way.  On the reverse itinerary that followed, I decided to see how well I could do again without the patch.  Just like the previous time, the ship was pitching and rolling  enough to tun everyone into drunken sailor impersonators in the hallways, but still no symptoms.  The same held for my third and final  crossing, and I came to the conclusion that maybe, at least in seas like that, seasickness really is all (or mostly) in one’s head.  If you expect it, you watch for it, and you find it.  That’s not always true, especially if the ship is rolling side to side, but I learned something about not assuming the worst.

I had a similar situation with jet lag on my return.  I had a truly horrendous time on my westbound return from the Baltic last summer, with four days of complete insomnia that left me staggered.  Traveling east is not nearly as bad, but I was amazed that I really had almost no symptom I could attribute to the travel, at least that wasn’t taken care of by a short nap the first two days.  I suppose it helps that I was dropped into a whirlwind,  having only a couple of weeks to do everything it takes to move my things back into my condo, move my son out of said condo, do a serious downsizing by clearing out a packed-to-the-ceiling storage unit, and preparing for the Great Giveaway party I am having in a few days, to pass on to my friends things I think are special but I no longer want to keep.

On this last assignment, I thought about what a move to Canada would mean in terms of possessions. After several decades of moves reduced my living situation from two homes to a one-bedroom condo, I am down to things I have cared (a little to a lot) about keeping.  I still have far more than I would consider taking that great a distance into an uncertain situation. And anyway, could I replace that favorite pan or vase, and not lug all that bulk and weight along with me?  For some things, easily yes, but other things remain priceless.

How much of what I still have reflects a life I no longer want or need?  What is memorabilia of a person I no longer am? How much stuff do I need to fulfill the still somewhat foggy vision I have of the next chapter in my life?  How much (or how little) will my son Ivan truly want to inherit? 

Nothing like asking him while he is here.  After multiple trips to Salvation Army, the consignment store and the dumpsters, I am considerably downsized, and he is figuring out how to take what he wants with him when he leaves next week. It’s more than I thought he would choose, and it pleases me he cares about some of the same things that have meant a lot to me. He  is in a different stage of life and he is taking what suits him now, or some version of himself he hopes to have soon enough to make lugging boxes worthwhile. Plus he can deadlift or wrestle pretty much anything in and out of a car now that his diet and exercise program has gotten him so gorgeously buff!

So back to the point about self-induced ailments, I have been simply too busy in body and mind to have jet lag, so I didn’t.  Maybe it’s a one- off, but it was a nice gift.

Oh, and another thing.  I have kept my weight pretty consistent, gaining only about ten pounds in seven years,  despite all the excesses of my way of life. This time,  for whatever reason, I packed on some pounds.  How many?  I don’t know, as I am scared to get on the scale.  When my clothes fit as well as they used to, I will weigh myself and say “gee it must have been really bad if I still weigh this much.”

Ivan has been doing the keto diet combined with 16/8 intermittent fasting for some time, the latter of which he got me started on before I left in November. He  has lost 30 pounds and looks fantastic.  I was pretty good most of the time about the  intermittent fasting (easy if you don’t care about breakfast) but apparently It wasn’t enough, so I added the keto diet the day after I got home.  I mention this because  there is a lot of talk about “keto flu,” the symptoms one may get when starting the diet.  Well, the symptoms are a lot like those of jet lag, and my conclusion is that starting the keto diet immediately upon return  was a great way to roll any mild symptoms of jet lag and keto flu into one short period.

So, dear readers, if you come back from vacation dragging from a long flight and feeling a little roly poly,  may i suggest that very low carbs and a couple of afternoon naps are a way of killing two birds with one stone.  One stone.  That’s fourteen pounds.  I’ll settle for that.

In March of 2018, I left for Manaus, Brazil with my good friend Jane, to begin what I called My Year of Living Travelly. Today when I disbark the ship, what grew into a full second year is now complete. Since I have no cruise until past the anniversary date, this is indeed a marker for me, made especially sweet by the fact that i am once again traveling with Jane. These kinds of bookends always add special meaning to events.

It is, in a sense, closure on this chapter in my life, because the things that marked truly living travelly were giving up my condo to tenants and getting rid of my car. I will sleep in my own bed for the first time in two years, and once i have wheels, I will no longer have to arrange a ride, or limit myself to what i can walk to. My San Diego friends have gotten so used to this that whatever we plan on doing, it is either walking distance or they simply add “I’ll pick you up.” Now I can do a little returning of the favor, though I must admit in a lot of ways I have actually liked life with no car. That is good to know as i plan my future.

There is another chapter ending today With great sadness, I announce that I will be ending my seven-year association with Silversea effective today. No, I have not been let go—in fact my evaluations are as high as ever. The problem is that the line has introduced new requirements of lecturers that aren’t acceptable to me. I hope they will soon change their minds, but the professional standards and code to which I hold myself aren’t consistent with working for Silversea at this time.

I am not going to say more here, because I value my relationship with the line. I sincerely hope they change their new policies, and when they do I want them to ask me back. Public airing of my issues is not a good way to enhance the chances of that. To me, the things they are now requiring aren’t worth the loss of good lecturers (I am pretty sure I won’t be the only one), but I have to recognize how many people would love to step into our shoes, regardless of what the line demands, so I have to be prepared for this to be forever.

Either way, I could never find words adequate to express my gratitude for the opportunities Silversea has given me to see the world and to continue teaching. Nothing but praise here for the wonderful people who have made my life soar far beyond my expectations and fulfill so many of my wildest dreams.

And San Diego, get ready.  You’ll be seeing more of me, at least for a while.  The next chapter, whatever it is, awaits!

I had a weird and wonderful experience yesterday.

A little background first:  for the last seven years I have never gone on a cruise where I wasn’t at least a little obsessed with being prepared for my lectures.  I leave home with everything as ready to go as I can make it, but I always discover problems with builds or images in the  slides, or decide I need to make it a little shorter or add something I just learned. I look things up that I have new questions about.  I doublecheck pronunciations of  place names and people.  It’s worth every minute to go on that stage ultra confident, and so far I have avoided anything close to a disaster.  Even when my hard drive failed earlier this year in Vietnam, I had a back up plan, or two or three, and limped through the rest of the cruise with the audience unaware anything was wrong.

The last two cruises have been particularly stressful because I have been in the role of destination speaker, meaning that my content is supposed to stick pretty close to the ports we are visiting.  I spent time between cruises a year ago visiting New Zealand, where I had never been, so I could get some awareness of the lay of the land and the general feel of the places we were going . Nevertheless, I still had to talk with a degree of authority about several places I hadn’t been able to visit.  Adding to the stress was the extraordinary number of Aussies and Kiwis on board—well over half the guests.  I hadn’t expected that because I assume people go away to take cruises, but when you live so far from so many of the world’s destinations, a chance to cruise locally is very attractive.  If I was a fraud, Iwould be found out for sure.

It all went off without much of a hitch, and since things went so smoothly I guess I wasn’t aware of how much stress I was experiencing.

On this cruise and the next (the last for this assignment) I am an enrichment speaker.  That means that I can talk more generally about interesting topics of my choosing, like women at sea, famous mutinies, Polynesian navigation and the like.  I am totally in my professorial comfort zone, and in fact have given all of the talks multiple times before.

Yesterday morning I had no lecture to give, and since I am ready for all upcoming ones,  I had nothing at all to do or to worry about.  I was hanging out in my cabin, reading  a totally enjoyable book on my veranda,  drinking a second cup of coffee, watching the  sunlight on the water—all the good stuff passengers on vacation can do.

I went in to my cabin and saw that it was still only about ten in the morning.  I was astonished.  Why in the world was there so much more time than I was used to?  Oh well, I said to myself, and settled in to do something to fritter away a little more time before lunch. I was just bobbing along, floating.

Then it occurred to me:  there were things going on that morning. I always go to my colleagues’ lectures and one of them was almost over! I dashed to the theatre just as he was finishing, then realized that another talk followed his that I wanted to go to.  I was so utterly out of it that I hadn’t even checked the schedule, wasn’t even relating to anything outside my own veranda, my own chair, my own time.

And it was wonderful!  I was actually on vacation, however briefly.  By that point it was over.  I had roiled the waters.  I was back on board, back in role. But I caught a glimpse of something I have difficulty ever achieving—a real, true break.

People may think of my life as one long vacation, but it’s not.  I am on duty every time I step out of my room.  I  have to please at a certain level or I won’t be invited back.  I’m not complaining, but please don’t picture me poolside with a tropical drink in my hand listening to the ukuleles play, because that almost never happens. Don’t picture me walking on stage and chatting my way through a lecture, because though I want it to look that way, that absolutely never happens.

I spent some time yesterday, walking by myself on the beach, occasionally recapturing that sense of  happy drift (selfie below). Today I am going off on Mare Island, New Caledonia, on a ship tour. I will be the escort, which means I go for free, but I have to be vigilant about what is going on with the guests.  At some point we will stop at a beach for a swim.  Sounds great to me, but you know what I most want to do?

Ditch it all, lie on my back in the water and just float.

 

 

 

This morning I awoke to headlines about the assassination in Iraq of a top Iranian military leader.  I felt my blood rising to a boil over the appalling mess the current inhabitant of the White House is making of everything he touches.

I moved further down my list of mail and came across a reference to a wonderful article, “Ichigo Ichie,” about the importance of  being “moment hunters,” of looking for value in a precious  instant of time that will not come again. The value of just being still, of  looking around,  of grounding in the present.  I have linked it here.

https://link.medium.com/OxNub5VkX2

What could I do to apply it to the negativity I was experiencing?

Then I remembered a precept  from Julia Cameron, author of Walking in the World, which I am now reading.  In it, she talks about the importance to creativity of taking  a walk each day.  Since I can’t walk on the ship except around a boring track or on the treadmill in the gym, I decided to go stand outside and watch the water, to see if I could move my head into a better place.

Within a few minutes, a transformation began.  Cameron is right, that dusrupting routines invites the inner artist to surface.  I haven’t written anything creative  in years now, but within a half an hour, I became a poet again.

The ocean calls,

Come out, stand at the rail, see me.

Watch the show the ship and I put on for you.

See the spray escaping from the bow,

How every plume is different.

This one a skier’s trail down a mountain of new powder

This one breath on a dandelion

This one the tumble of spilled white paint.

A roar in a packed stadium

A slammed door echoing in a hallway

The whisper of a conspirator beckoning.

Drawing close, each swell says “here I am, this one is me.

What can we become  before I take my water back?”

The ocean stretches to a monotonous horizon.

Ship and swell make art of the moment.

It’s not particularly good poem, but because I am staying in the present, I don’t  intend to polish it.  It is a poem about a moment. It is mine, and that is good enough.  And at least for now, my rage is tamed.

Today is another turnaround day between cruises.  This morning everyone got off, and by later this afternoon a whole new group will have arrived.  There’s a period of time between about 10AM and 1PM when the ship feels so different.  The suite attendants and butlers  are working at breakneck pace to get the rooms ready for the next occupants.  Managers, officers,  and guest relations people are hustling behind the scenes to be ready, but everywhere else, the ship is quiet.

It feels a little like that moment between exhaling and the next inhalation.   The bars are empty, the gym is empty, the lobby is empty, the restaurants are empty.

I was the only one in the gym, and then a little later, the only one in my section of the restaurant where the lunch buffet is served.  Eventually, down at the other end, the singer from the supper club was coming in to start her day, having slept in after her late night show.  Most of the waiters were standing at attention with no one to be attentive to.  It is a part of life on the ship that most passengers never see.

That was beginning to change by the time I finished lunch.  The first arrivals were trickling in.  The sense was rising that we were on duty again, no longer part of the private life of the ship but a piece of the collective identity of those in service to the experience of the guests.  In a few minutes the Cruise Director will come on over the sound system to announce that the rooms are ready, and the halls will fill with new guests and their butler escorts, “going public” again.

That for me is the start of the new cruise. I am in my room now, but when I next step out into the hallway it will be as my public self, with a smile and a name badge. I will be Laurel Corona, Guest Lecturer again.

In a few hours I will stand up in one of the lounges to greet new guests with a pitch for what I will be speaking about, then on to dinner with the solo travelers, as I always do the first night.  Before I know it I will be back in my room brushing my teeth and hopping into bed.  It begins in earnest tomorrow, with my first talk and from there, an ongoing obligation to stay actively and pleasantly in the public eye.

I’m ready.  I’m just glad there’s time for a nap first.

 

I lost a good friend to cancer this week. Sheryl Gobble was a former colleague of mine at San Diego City College, and we kept in touch when she moved to another campus. A few years ago she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that affects the linings of organs such as the uterus and creates havoc all over the body in time. She endured surgeries, and several rounds of chemo in her effort to live with the cancer.

That was always the way she put it. It was her cancer journey, she called it. She didn’t see cancer as her enemy, focusing on her own body as this amazing thing that was doing its best to heal. She talked about her cancer as something she coexisted with, and that was what she did, as long as she could, with an alien presence she knew would prove too powerful maybe within five years, ten at the outside. She got three, but those years were packed with milestones like seeing her last of three sons out of high school and on to college, and some special trips with her husband Luis and family.

Sheryl lost her hair but none of her sparkling personality with her first round of chemo. Since i was retired and not cruising at the time, I took Sheryl to some of her sessions at what she called The Kaiser Day Spa. Yes, she could laugh about it. That was one of the things that was so awe inspiring about Sheryl. For a while she brought little photos and other items to decorate the space where she would sit for hours while toxins dripped into her body. She packed a lunch for us, and though it sounds weird, we had a lot of fun.

After chemo Wednesdays were over we still got together every Wednesday for a while to do something else fun, like a walk at the Self-Realization Fellowship Gardens in Encinitas, and having wine afterwards with lunch in Del Mar. Here we are.

I took Sheryl on a cruise a few months after the completion of her first round of chemo, to celebrate life, hope and friendship. Her hair had started to grow in again in these crazy rag-doll tufts that we decided needed some taming. We went to one of those free beauty consultations on the ship, and the hair stylist took Sheryl on as a project and gave her her first post-chemo hair styling. You can see the result in the photo at the top of this post.

Sheryl went through subsequent chemo when the cancer came back faster than expected. I got wrapped up in living travelly, and our time together dwindled. In September of this year before I left on an assignment, I realized I hadn’t heard from her for a while, so I sent an email asking what was up. It slipped to the back of my mind in the flurry of my life, and I just realized after I heard of her death, that I never heard back. I guess subconsciously I knew it must be bad if she didn’t reply, and I guess I wasn’t quite brave enough to follow up.

Sheryl, the eternal optimist, the chirpiest voice in the room, the quickest with the positive comment, the one who showed up at any event that was important to anyone, including me.  She was slipping away.

I am here in New Zealand coping with this sad news. The day I heard, I was in Tauranga, in the Bay of Plenty on the North Island. I went ashore and bought a rose from a florist—pink for the pussy hat she wore at a rally (against you-know-who when he said you-know-what), and variegated with red for her courage, energy, and just plain brightness.

 

I took it to the bottom of Mauao, a volcano sacred to Maori, and waded out into the water of the bay to let it float away.  Sheryl, you were a rose. And yes, when your body could no longer support your life, your spirit rose. Enjoy the universe, beloved friend. Tell me all about it when I get there. I’ll pack a lunch.

I had this idea.  I would take all the cruise assignments I could in one year, rent out my condo, give my car to my son, and “live travelly” for that year.  I reached the one-year mark in March 2019, and had a packed second year of cruise assignments, so I just kept going.

Since I have no more assignments until April 2020, I will be completing year two when  I reach the end of my current assignment on Feb 1.  That means the ship I am on has become the venue to reflect on what all of this living travelly adds up to, and what is next.

I have now visited 97 countries, about 30 more if you use a list that treats  non-contiguous parts of countries, like Alaska and Hawaii as their own entities, and not really what we mean by a trip to the US. A few in Europe and the Caribbean I had visited before I started cruising, but most I have visited at least once again, so about 90 or more of that list came to me as a result of the blessing of this job. I have at least set foot on every continent except Antarctica.I have no idea how many ports I have called at, or how many sites I have visited, except it has to be several hundred

The map below shows in orange the countries I have visited.  The big holes now I could reach by ship are coastal Africa, plus Japan and the rest of Northern Asia, which now define my bucket list.

My guiding principle for my life has been to ask,”what are you doing that makes you feel as if you are still growing, and what doesn’t feel that way anymore?”.  Until recently I’d have answered unequivocally and resoundingly that cruising had a powerful growth trajectory but I am not sure how I feel now. Yes, I still love every minute of being in new places, or revisiting favorite ones, and the social aspects of life on board are still full of possibilities.  But I can’t help but wonder if maybe I am more marking time at this point than adding value to my life at the rate I used to , or perhaps even hiding out on ships from what might be more growth oriented for me.

I haven’t gone much further in my thinking than to allow in that niggling thought about how maybe I am hiding from my future at this point. My life story up to now would suggest that thoughts like these tend to burrow in and fairly quickly sprout into huge blossoms if anything is to come of them at all.  Suddenly, in what feels like scarcely overnight, I realize I am done with something and ready to move on.

I doubt it will be that dramatic with cruising, since I just can’t imagine saying no when there’s an opportunity to go somewhere interesting. But there are changes afoot that make me pretty sure I will be cutting back substantially  in 2020 and perhaps beyond. More about these changes in a future post.

I do know a couple of things: when I get back in February, I am moving back into my condo and getting a car.  I am also close to certain that my former San Diego life won’t hold me for long. What then is anybody’s guess but 2020 is shaping up to be a year of big decisions for me.  A little less living travelly, perhaps,  but hopefully a little more living meaningfully and excitedly.

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