Elle’s Journey

It’s been so long since I’ve written. And while the silence has been complete for my writing on-line, the activity and learning I’ve been living in my day-to-day life has been huge.

(A quick note, you may not have received notice of my last two postings on Vermont and New York from back in December due to the way I wrote and posted them. Scroll down and catch yourself up with those postings before reading on here. Cheers!)

After leaving New York and loving EVERY minute of it, I headed to San Francisco. My girlfriend Jen and cousins and nieces live in the city and across the SF Bay. They were to be my last major stop before boarding the ship to begin work again.

Yes indeed, towards the end of my stay in New York I finally got the call from the home office for my ship placement. I admit I was disappointed to find out that I wouldn’t be headed straight to the Caribbean. But also very happy I would be on a low-profile ship during my first placement. It also had the added benefit of being nearer to Seattle, and in the same time zone as Eden Landscapes in case something needed to be handled rapidly.

So knowing my days were numbered before I started my position, I jumped into the myriad details I needed to complete before I went ship-board in a few short weeks. Unfortunately, my time with family and friends was tucked in between the moments while I wasn’t working in San Francisco.

Happy to see so many of my family over the past two months, I packed up for the last time and headed to Los Angeles, though not without some funny and not-so-funny events.

Two days before leaving for Los Angeles I caught wind of a bad situation brewing with my new hire at Eden back in Seattle. It wasn’t so fun to have to fly back to Seattle at the last minute to deal with firing a key employee and salvaging the situation with the company. The silver lining in the situation? It gave me the opportunity to see a few friends while I was there for my little 48 hour whirlwind visit.

So I’ve now been ship-board for over a month. It is hard to believe, since a contract is only 6 months long. I’ve been adjusting well and taking to the work and life aboard like a fish to water, thanks to my chameleon like qualities as a person who loves life.

Giving you a taste of life aboard a ship is challenging to communicate, so I’ll just mention a few tidbits to give you a flavor of it and allow your imagination to paint you a picture:

• The ship sails out of its home-port, Los Angeles two times per week, Monday and Friday.

• Each time it leaves port we have approximately 2,500 new guests on board.

• My job is to reach as many of those guests as possible with the information and inspiriation about visiting and patronizing the businesses in our ports-of-call.

• To do that, I give live public lectures that are recorded for television, produce extra ‘shows’ that are aired on my ship’s channel, and maintain high visibility with all our guests by socializing, socializing, socializing. (If you can believe it, a bit more socializing than can actually enjoy.)

• The days are long and it literally is like living 2 or 3 days off-ship in one day on-board simply because so much activity happens aboard on a daily basis.

• There are approximately 800 crew with over 60 nationalities represented.

• It is a fish-bowl among the staff. Everything that’s done on-board before midnight will be seen and heard about by the entire staff by morning. Worse than any high school rumor mill, only now its done in over 60 languages.

So if you can get a flavor of it, it’s high-octane living in an artificial environment. I’m loving it as the scientist loves a well-designed experiment or as an adventurous woman loves travel in a new and exciting country.

On the professional side, the experience in broadcast I’m building and the business to business coaching I’m able to do with the the businesses that I represent is ace-in-the-hole.

On the personal side, I think it’s the most amazing opportunity to share stories from all around the world at the dinner table with my friends from South Africa who work in the casino, or the bartenders from the Philippines, or the waitress from Romania, or the Spa Manager from England, or or or. . . the list never ends. I am trully working inside of a ‘mini United Nations’.

It’s an interesting dichotomy for me to be the larger-than-life, glamorous ‘Lady of the Ship’ on TV counter-balanced by my desire to be the most real and kind person I can be in an environment that is plastic and harsh. It reminds me of the often quoted, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” I will be that.

So my long-time dream of traveling the world to gather people’s stories is, in-part, being fulfilled by my job aboard ships. With one large difference, now the stories and people are coming to me instead of me coming to the stories. Interesting twist.

I leave you with many thoughts of well-wishes. I look forward to when you and I can sit down and I can listen to some of your stories for the past months. Until then, I’ll see you soon.

Linda