Well, well, well. It's been a minute.
I'd love to say I've been away doing something incredibly glamorous or that I've been off having some sort of life-changing, main-character experience. And while there have certainly been a few plotlines worth discussing, the more accurate explanation is that life has been lifing, work has been working, and my brain has been operating with approximately 37 tabs open at any given time.
A lot has been happening, both on and off the boat, and somewhere along the way, writing in this little corner of the internet fell to the bottom of the to-do list. Which is ironic, considering the entire point of making The Junk Drawer was to have somewhere to put all the thoughts that refuse to leave me alone.
So, let's catch up.
One of the stranger parts of working on a boat is that you don't really get to leave work. Not properly, anyway. You work with the same people you live with, eat with, spend your downtime with, and occasionally sit in complete silence with while everyone pretends the atmosphere isn't just a little bit off. There is no commute home, no slamming your laptop shut until Monday, no going back to your own space and letting the day dissolve. The office is also the house, the kitchen, the living room, and sometimes the only place you can go to avoid everyone is your own cabin.
And when you're living in such close quarters, the general mood can become its own little weather system. Things are great, then they're not, then they're great again, and then suddenly everyone seems to be operating on a slightly different frequency. Tensions come and go, personalities clash, and the smallest things can feel disproportionately large when there isn't much room to breathe around them.
The funny thing is, I actually love people. I love a good chat, a bit of banter, and knowing what's going on. But I also love being alone. I love nesting. I love having my own little space, doing absolutely nothing, and not having to participate in a conversation simply because another human being is within a five-foot radius. Apparently, these are slightly conflicting personality traits when you live and work on a boat.
I also have this deeply inconvenient habit of wanting everyone to be happy with me. Not necessarily because I think everyone needs to like me, but because I find tension so uncomfortable that my immediate instinct is to figure out how to make it go away. Did I do something? Is someone annoyed? Should I say something? Should I not say something? Should I just become really pleasant and hope the general atmosphere improves?
Naturally, I have appointed myself to a position nobody asked me to fill: Director of Making Sure Everyone Is Okay.
And the thing is, not every mood needs managing. Not every awkward interaction needs investigating. Not every bit of tension is mine to absorb, solve, or quietly carry around for the rest of the day. Sometimes people are in a bad mood. Sometimes personalities don't mesh. Sometimes a situation is just uncomfortable, and there isn't a magical combination of being nice, helpful, agreeable, or sufficiently entertaining that will fix it.
A shocking concept, I know.
Outside of boat life, meanwhile, the world has been carrying on at what feels like an entirely unreasonable pace. There have been weddings, celebrations, big life moments, and also some much sadder reminders that life doesn't wait for a convenient time to happen. People get married, people move on to new chapters, and sometimes people leave us before we're quite ready for them to. It has made me think a lot about how strange it can feel to be living in your own little floating bubble while everything else keeps moving.
There is something about being away, especially when your work and home are essentially the same place, that can make you feel a little disconnected from the life happening elsewhere. And when something significant happens, I find myself wanting to be stationary. To be somewhere familiar. To have a normal routine, see the people I love, make a cup of coffee in my own space, and just exist without having to think about the next schedule, guest arrival, or where I'm supposed to be in twenty minutes.
I don't think that's necessarily a desire to leave this life behind. I love the opportunities it gives me, the places I get to see, and the experiences I probably wouldn't have otherwise. But I think it's possible to love a life and still occasionally wish it would sit still for literally five minutes.
Which brings me back to the general theme of the last little while: trying to figure out what is actually mine to carry.
I think I spend a lot of time trying to keep all the little pieces of my life running smoothly, including the pieces that don't belong to me. I want to be good at my job, good to the people around me, present for the people I miss, and somehow also maintain a perfectly balanced personal life while living in a floating tin can with a rotating cast of characters. Reasonable expectations, obviously.
But maybe the answer is to stop treating every shift in the atmosphere like a personal assignment. To let people have their moods, let life be a little messy, and accept that I cannot make every situation comfortable for everyone involved. Sometimes I can be kind, do my job, go to my cabin, and mind my own business. Revolutionary stuff I know.
Anyway, that's a little of what's been going on. The drawer has been neglected, but not forgotten, and I have approximately 700 other thoughts waiting to be deposited here.
Hopefully, I'll be a little better about writing them out :)
xx, Meg
