When I worked on cruise ships, my favorite moment of my handover when I joined a new ship was when the ship phone was handed over to me.

Not.

Actually, that was the moment I felt all my freedom for the next 2-5-11 months close shut behind a door.

You see, the great thing about being a stage manager on the cruise line I worked on is that you are technically on call 24/7.

Now, once in a blue moon, I would hand this phone off to someone else when I got off the ship, but generally that would just mean I would come back onboard to more (and sometimes pretty weird) problems than I was leaving.

This was partially because if something was going really wrong, even if I had planned to get off the ship, I now wasn’t going anywhere. This was also because the people I handed the phone off to were the members of my tech team. And while each of them were phenomenal at what they were actually hired to do, it was inevitable that if I left the ship and handed the phone off to the Sound Tech, some crazy lighting thing would happen. Or the Rigging Tech would wind up tearing apart the Crow’s Nest trying to fix a sound problem.

Or, my favorite, some weird management, scheduling, someone needs permission thing would happen and my tech onboard would offer a really unusual answer resulting in a few days of odd dominoes falling while I try to figure out why someone thinks they can do what they’re doing.

Conversely, if I had the “day” (it’s never a full day – with the one super notable exception of when a volcano erupted and I did get my only full day off on a cruise ship ever) off and stayed in my cabin in my pajamas watching movies, that flipping phone wouldn’t ring once.

So I started to get fairly neurotic and resigned to the fact that it was just easier to stay onboard almost all the time rather than dealing with fighting with my techs about who would take the phone (which, of course, I could – and sometimes did – dictate, but this was also my first management position ever and for some reason demanding other take my phone when no one was willing was probably top of the list activities onboard that I hated to do).

As a result, I would slowly slide into a very stir crazy and mean version of myself.

It’s totally fine to skip some port days to just chill but eventually, you just have to get off the everloving ship. Like, it literally becomes a mental health thing.

Similarly, on tour, when the schedule is absolutely terrible, I don’t want to explore the city I’m in or hang out with the cast or crew. I want to be left alone to sleep all day.

Again, sometimes this is necessary.

Most times though, even if I’m still pretty tired going into the next run of shows, I’m happier and better adjusted to life if I get up and do something.

The past few weeks with the time change and the world getting colder and darker again, I didn’t even realize I had my old “it’s just too bothersome to get off the ship mentality” brewing.

To be fair, I did think “hmmm, something’s off” when I wore the same pair of leggings for three days straight and just kept changing my top, since that’s all they can see through Zoom at work.

But it was just like ship days when I hadn’t gotten off the ship in too long. I did exactly what I had to do for work and then curled up in bed, watched TV, slept, and repeated. And got snippier and snippier with my poor dad who has probably wondered many times this fall why he let me move back in.

I looked at the weather for the weekend and thought, maybe do something? But masks, and distancing, and where? And who? Even my boyfriend is busy renovating his bathroom (in a one bathroom house), so I knew I wouldn’t make my normal trek down to visit him.

I think I sort of resigned myself to another weekend of PJs, Grace and Frankie, and cuddling with the dog in bed.

So I got my act together. I called two friends and invited them over for a backyard fire on Saturday – an activity we had made work before.

And then another old friend reached out to ask if I wanted to go hiking on Sunday with her and another friend of ours. She had already planned almost everything. I just had to wear a mask and show up.

Let me tell you, as soon as we plunked down around that fire and started chatting, I felt exactly like I had just stepped off a ship for the first time in weeks. If you’ve never done that, it’s a little hard to explain, but it is a distinct feeling and I thought… ahhh. I see.

Sometimes we all have to get off the ship.

I’m not encouraging big parties or any nonsense that will keep us all from working for even longer. But I am encouraging doing something safe to make things a little better, even if the effort to do it seems monumental.

• Go for that walk.
• Take the long drive to look at Christmas lights.
• Slowly work your way through the 28 best donut shops in NJ and create a detailed spreadsheet to determine which is actually the best donut.

Heck, I have even loved every Zoom game night I had with friends with past year, even though the effort of yet another Zoom at times seemed positively horrific. But, honestly, with my friends, and even more so with a game, instead of having to actually think of things to talk about after a long day of rambling away on work Zoom, I don’t regret those evenings together.

At any rate, I guess I’m even more grateful for those ship days now, because I recognize I need to remember to “get off the ship” sometimes this winter, even if it feels like an impossible task.