I Was Enchanted To Meet You – Again

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I am on a cruise ship while I write these words. Even less surprising is that I’m sitting in the Schooner Bar on a cruise ship while I write these words. Some of my best writing has happened on cruise ships. 

But there’s something special about this ship. This Schooner Bar. 

This is the Schooner Bar where I completed my first book. Sure, a lot about it has likely changed since I sat with my green composition notebook (I have no idea why I remember what color the notebook was but here we are… but now I’m questioning if it was actually red. I might be getting old.)

When I booked this trip back in April, I was super excited to be back on Enchantment of the Seas since my love of cruising started on this ship. Enchantment wasn’t my first cruise but it definitely held better memories than my first cruise on Independence on the Seas back in 2015.

Note that it’s not the ship’s fault, it was the people I was with and the circumstances of the trip. I have nothing but love for Independence of the Seas. In 2022 I took 5 separate trips on Indy and had a blast each time. If I remember correctly, Independence was the ship I was supposed to be on back in 2020 for my birthday before the world went to hell in a handbasket.

Moral of the story is – I’m happy to be back.

I will say that I’ve done very little writing on this trip which is a first for me. Actually, this is the first time my laptop has see the light of day on this trip. I think the overall exhaustion of the past couple months has caught up with me and I truly needed to relax. I’ve ended up doing a whole lot of reading on this trip which isn’t a bad thing in the slightest. 

But even when I’m not actively writing, the ideas are usually flowing all around and through me and that hasn’t been the case this time around. My mind has been blank. Again, I think it’s the exhaustion. I didn’t realize just how tired I was until I stepped foot on the ship on Thanksgiving Day. 

I have drawn two conclusions from this:

1) I’m about to get sick. A weird thing to know but I had a feeling before I even set sail that it was coming. It has been weeks of non-stop nonsense and the overworking and overthinking is finally going to catch up to me. This usually happens when I go from a million miles an hour to nothing. My body will punish me for relaxing.

2) A writing slump is coming. Again, exhaustion has caught up with me and my brain isn’t pumping out weird ideas like it has been the past few months. Hell, my last cruise in September pumped out two short stories that have since been published (more on that later) and this trip I have taken a lot of naps. The plus side is, it means I’ll be blogging more which is my go-to move when the ideas slow down. I can’t think of ways to write about tortured characters so I’ll just write about my tortured self.

I’m also going to blame the fact that I though booking a cruise on a holiday would be fun. I definitely have more to say about this cruise in a later post but I’ll leave you with a little teaser: HOLY SHIT ALL OF THESE PEOPLE ARE MADDENING.

I’m fine.

It’s going to be fine.

Remember when this post started off as me reminiscing about writing my first book. Those were fun times.

There’s a couple sitting at the table where I did most of my writing on that trip. The wife is giving me weird looks but that’s pretty par for the course when you whip out a laptop on a cruise. I also keep staring at them. 

It’s a two way street lady.

A lot has changed in the almost 6 years since I last stepped foot on Enchantment of the Seas – some good the better, some for the worse. 

This is also my last cruise of the year so I’m feeling a bit wistful. 

I really don’t know what I set out to accomplish in the post but I know I’m going to stop writing now because there are two children running and screaming around the bar and the parents are doing nothing about it and I really don’t want to get in trouble for tripping a child.