An I For An Island- Living Well Is The Best Revenge

An I For An Island

I think of my job as Art Director  as leading people to those moments of awe – ecstasy that overtakes you when you encounter a new idea, or place.  After all, the definition of ecstasy is that you are not doing your ordinary everyday routine....essentially stepping into an alternative reality.

There is an I in Team Ed 

I feel that way about living and working on a cruise ship- hours of boredom tinged with moments of hysteria, and those moments are provided by Team Ed, fun informative and entertaining  special events.

With the energy and vision of an internet self-starter,  I create, manage and delegate, throwing it all up against the wall and seeing what gets to stick. It's always fresh, always new, some trial and error, but some things remain the same-Provide  Customer Service and  Drive Revenue.(I lifted those terms from my Linked In profile).

At  the beginning of the day,  I have a guy named Tim Gunn, (The Hotel Director)looking over my shoulder saying, 

"Make it Work"

Next, Rod Tidwell   (Fleet Operations) phones  from Shore side,  and   makes me shout out in my best Jerry Maguire,

Show Me the Money 2, Short

"Show me the money"

At the end of the day, after guests  feelings get hurt because I ran out of champagne or tuna fish sandwiches, or ran into overtime messing with the start of BINGO (That is an absolute no no-a double negative),  Bob Sugar Jerry's agent (The Revenue Manager) reminding me

N "It's not show friends, it's show business."

Rod Tidwell  sends Jerry ( Me) a voice mail  after I barely  hit my sales target:


You are hanging on by a very thin thread.

"You are hanging on by a very thin thread and I dig that about you!"

Sure enough,  Dorothy Boyd (Jerry's Girl Friend)  An Assistant Cruise Director, (in my case,Sarah, the ships Nurse) who likes  the show that we did, will smile, pat me on the back and say,

You had me at hello.
"You had me at hello"

I respond as Jerry would,


You complete me

"You complete me."

The Cruise Director reminds us, 

"Who cares what the crew thinks, they're not paying for the voyage, the guests are".

In some way or another it always does work! When it doesn't, we get to do it all over again. 

Then there is the travelling- the ports of call

There is no doubt about it, the exhilarating state of mind that travel can evoke, when everything seems suddenly fresh, vivid, intensely interesting, and memorable.

On An Island With the Two G's-Gandi and Gaugain

When I titled this "An I for an Island", I thought of getting even ( in terms of money lost playing poker) and the  famous Gandi quotes,

 Hate the sin not the sinner.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind 

I mashed it up  up to say 

Hate the Win, not the Winner, because bad beats are overhead, chips, the cost of doing business.

I wrote on my poker blog years ago. H8 the game, not the player, and my lessons of loss(es) learned from playing high stakes poker, winning and losing the American Dream on a Weekend.



Paul Gaugain, who was a mess physically and mentally is quoted as saying, 

 "Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge."

 I, however, wanted to get revenge on my own thoughts- the idea that my personal freedom was for sale, something I had to purchase, and that travelling took a lot of money. 

Every behavior has a positive intention, unfortunately,  playing poker is an "ify" proposition to finance world travel....although I did go to Macau.
 
I wrote this post: 

The United States of Unconscious Gambling

Poker without money is an opinion; and opinions about poker are just shovels we use to dig our own graves: because if you are not playing poker but thinking about playing poker you are already dead.

I still had "Juice" and "Skin" in the game, and didn't want to leave- You can only quit once and the science of happiness that Ken Keyes talks about  in The 12 Pathways To the Higher Consciousness Planes of Unconditional Love and Oneness, poker was messing with my Serenity. Going on the ships would be a forced exile, and recharge away from the roller coaster.

Impossible Is Nothing


Going out to sea is  the infinity of hope, the preview of life's coming attractions where you have final cut in your own movie.  You can lose yourself in the ocean's food for thought. Its  menu is the meal,  and itineraries are full of promises. It gives you a  sense of destination and the energy to get started again.

The weather is here wish you were beautiful

Call it faith!  A passion for the possible. I am full of it, and shooting from the hip that is to say,   as I stated, having an adventure is something more but nothing less than bad planning.  When I cold-called for my first ship job, and got it after a 12 minute elevator pitch, I began to trust myself, and my elevator pitch, and only when you trust yourself can you truly begin to live it up.


  

 In fact, the only thing you need if you work on a ship to finance your world travelling is a love  and passion for travelling and for what you do---- the time and opportunity is onboard the ship, and the money flows based on your commitment, focus and determination(if you are commissioned).  You get there. Your attitude will reflect your altitude. Instant gratification takes to long. You get there slowly. 


Jean Paul Sartre, the French existentialist said, 

Freedom is what you do to what has been done to you

 I would value-add that by saying ,

Freedom is what you do to what has been done to you by your own thoughts, words and actions.  (See my blog post As Seen On TV).

You Do What On A Cruise Ship?

Malcom Gladwell's 10,000 Rule  of  practice is required to achieve a level of mastery and being a SME, Subject Matter Expert, I put in the time. His   book is about outliers, about men and women who do things that are out of the ordinary. I would have to say, living  and working on a cruise ship, is somewhat extraordinary, and definitely unusual. 

Everyone has a photographic memory, but not everyone has film

 Thanks to digital, and my trusted camera, who cares. Just point and shoot, and you capture snapshots of moments. I'm an extremely talkative  person.  Yet photos speak volumes. I may not be a Master like Ansel Adams, but I agree with what he said---Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs. 

To take a photograph of yourself is to participate in your own  mortality, vulnerability, and mutability

2011 World Cruise

Wish Fulfillment  and The  Law Of Attraction

My definition of Thinking is when your  mind is separate from your  body: Some call it dreaming. I call it using your imagination. It is the preview of life's coming attractions. That's when you can leap long distances,  go forward and backward  in time, walk  through solid brick walls and never age, 

My definition of Magical Thinking,  or MT, is when we can manufacture experiences in our mind, and then later, attract these situations into our life.  The mind IS, after all, what the brain DOES. Put simply, you  attract into your  life whatever you consistently think about.  

I always go back to the importance of being Ernest (Hemingway) 

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best --make it all up --but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way. 

2010 World Tour Cruises

2009 World Tour Cruises


Hawaii 2007-2008