The Voice Of A Traveler

And that is my sentiments for this fine day in Juneau, Alaska. For the last three weeks I have enjoyed bright sunny days with blue skies, which has made me wonder what happened to the typical Alaska that rains more than 300 days of the year. Well, today has returned to normal and it is a miserable rainy day. I’m just happy for all the good weather that we’ve had until now and in about five weeks I will be in the Caribbean, where the weather should be fabulous all the time. I was looking at our itinerary and it looks like we’ll be in Tampa and Key West every week, and then the other five days of the week we’ll be in different ports all the time. The Cayman Islands will be on the agenda once every two weeks, and I know we’ll be in Mexico often. It sounds like it’s gonna be a blast. I hear the money isn’t as good as in Alaska, but we’ll also have more free time to compensate for that…not to mention all the awesome ports that we’ll be in.

I would rate this job as the second hardest job that I have ever done in my life. Second only to selling books door to door. When I sold books, I worked 83 hours a week, here I work a measly 63. Selling books was more draining than this job, but that job only spanned 10 weeks and I knew that when I was done with those 10 weeks, I would be done with the job. This job is 8 months and I don’t get any days off. I work an average of 9 hours a day 7 days a week. I will probably get a day off when we go through the panama canal just because that will be a 21 day cruise with the same passengers and we just won’t be as busy. Because of all this work, there is one dramatic similarity between these two jobs that I would like to underline. Dreams.

When I worked as a book salesman, I would have my book bag right next to the bed where I slept, and on several occasions I would grab the bag in my sleep, pull it into bed with me, and start giving my sales pitch. With this job, I constantly find myself waking up in the middle of the night trying to explain to customers that the photos are $19.95 and it’s buy 3 get one free. Half the time the customers just look back at me with no comprehension, and so I lay back in bed. I feel so guilty for not giving it my all to explain to them the price. I feel bad like I’m being a bad person when I close my eyes when the customer is still looking at me not understanding what the price is. It seems so real, and it’s literally almost impossible for me to realize that it’s a dream. Once, I realized it was a dream so in the middle of me mumbling the price, I just laid back down and didn’t even try anymore. The best time though, was when my roommate came into the room late one night after I had gone to bed, and apparently I sat up, pulled the curtain back from my bed, and declared to him “Somebody might want to order something!” I vaguely remember doing this, but I was in such a stupor that it seemed like a completely natural thing to say at the time.

I think all this dreaming and sleep working is very interesting, especially considering that they have only happened to me with the two busiest jobs that I’ve ever had.