The day is Tuesday, but I only know that because the elevator I just rode had a sign on the floor telling me the day of the week. The crew on the ship rotate the elevator day-tags nightly, right around midnight. I saw them do it, once. They have this metal tool that looks a lot like a fireplace poker. On the day I saw the rotation, all they had to do was pick up the existing sign, flip it over, and make sure it dropped into place. I imagine it’s a little more involved on other days.
It is easy to lose track of time on a cruise like this. This morning, we pulled up and parked next to a glacier. Melissa and I took a bunch of photos, and I’d share some of them if I could have more than one device connected to the Internet at a time. I could probably go back to our room, get my phone charger, transfer the pictures via cable to my Surface, but that sounds like a lot of work. For now, trust me when I say that the views in Alaska can be breathtaking and surreal.
Actually, you know what? You deserve a treat. Here is a picture I took while Melissa and I were getting breakfast. The blue thing in the middle is a glacier. Ask me about crevasses and moraines.
The ship we’re traveling on is The Voyager of the Seas, and it is part of the Royal Caribbean fleet. We’ve been on a ship almost identical to this before. I’m very familiar with the layout. Not so much that I could navigate it blindfolded, but I know the fastest way to get from the aft to the fore (go to Deck 4, go outside, and walk along the starboard side so as to avoid smokers). You can also go to Deck 5 and walk through the promenade, but then you’ll have to encounter a bunch of people that aren’t in your group. That is, if you’re traveling with a group of around 100 writers, as I am.
That’s the other facet of this trip. Writing Excuses Retreat: The Grand Finale. It is the last planned cruise. There are hopes and dreams that they’ll start up again in 2029, when ICE and Trump aren’t making it difficult for our international community to join us. Trump ruins everything. Even my beloved writing retreats.
But I don’t want to think about Trump or ICE or Hegseth or zombie Mitch or any of the myriad things that I think so much about when I’m home. That’s one of the points of going on this retreat. To get away from the real world for a little while, vacation, relax, connect with the found family which is this writing community, and try to get some writing done.
I already brought up some of the bullshit that’s going on in the real world, as it were. If you were to extrapolate from that and assume I’m failing to vacation properly in other ways, you’d be right. My clothes don’t fit very well anymore, so I’ve been careful about what I’ve been eating. And, to help Melissa’s blood sugar levels, we’ve been walking a lot, especially after meals. My feet feel like they’re about to fall off. I’m constantly aware of the muscles in my legs. And, foolishly, we’ve been getting up to an alarm every morning to make sure we can get a good spot in the Windjammer on Deck 11.
As far as connecting with the community, I’m doing an adequate job. They’re really what I’m here for, after all this time. These truly are friends, even if I only see them for one week of the year. Good people. Good writers. Found family. My people.
I’ve managed to get some writing done, too. I’ve advanced The Psychic Out of Time a little bit. There was a particularly difficult spot I’ve been struggling with for the last couple of months. The section wasn’t complicated. I found it kind of boring, and if the writer is bored, the reader will be very bored. I needed to find a way to make it either shorter or better, and this week, I figured out how to do both.
Later today, I’ll be doing a reading from The Psychic Out of Time. Reading in front of a crowd is nerve wracking, exhilarating, and reaffirming in different stages. I’m really only nervous about this one section because I have to do a kind of funny voice for half the dialog. If I pull it off, my peers will be entertained. Otherwise it’ll be embarrassing.
There is a kind of melancholy I’m holding at bay, because as one of the other writers pointed out before we even got here, this could be the last time I’m going to see some of these people. Melissa and I have been making this trip for 8 years. It’s hard to believe that this is the last one. It makes me wish that we had more time on this cruise.
As I suggested at the beginning, it’s easy to lose track of time, even when we have a schedule of events and items on the agenda forcing us to delineate and divide all of this gelatinous time. I’m doing my best to just be in the moment, laugh, love, and enjoy, without thinking about how Friday will arrive before we are ready, and The Grand Finale will be finished.
In case I don’t post about it tomorrow, the second episode of Write Something Good goes live on Wednesday, September 9th at noon Pacific time. You can find it on Spotify, Apple, and the video footage is on YouTube. The first episode was the introduction, so there wasn’t that much meat on the bones. The second episode is on how to analyze writing advice, to make sure it’s something you should listen to.