Most people know I love to cruise - it really is an odd phenomenon for a person who grew up on the prairies and is a Leo (cats and water?). And when I was asked to consider being a visiting scholar in Florianopolis, Jean and I realized that we could check off another item from the bucket list...do a South American cruise. There was a cruise conveniently scheduled from Valparaiso, Chile, to Buenos Aires, Argentina, over the Christmas and New Year's holidays. It was also a ship we had sailed on and liked - the Celebrity Eclipse. The Eclipse is a good-sized ship with a capacity of 2865 passengers, so with the crew likely has about 3800 people. It has all the amenities you can imagine...except for self-serve laundry facilities.
As it turned out, the Eclipse was repositioning from Los Angeles to Buenos Aires for our Winter. Needing to find a way to Brazil it made sense to hop the ship in LA and, even before booking this segment of the cruise, a sign was sent unto me...a ridiculously low airfare in business class from Winnipeg to LA. Cruises are not exactly cheap but neither are airfares to South America. And, being away for over 3 months, I would be toting a lot of luggage. Plus the flight would be 10+ hours and one needs to be able to stretch. And so the sign sent unto me became my destiny - 30 days aboard the Eclipse combining travel with a work retreat.
So I flew to LA December 5, 2023, to begin my new adventure. True to form, despite booking business class, my luggage did not arrive with me to LA - no explanation from Air Canada and it did cause a bit of angst for me. In any event, 9 hours later my luggage did make it to my hotel in San Pedro. On December 6 I boarded the Eclipse in a very efficent embarkation process to get settled into my "floating office".
The Eclipse has all one needs for a comfortable work retreat and journey. Different areas to settle in for work, breakout areas for taking breaks, a social buzz, twice daily room service, prepared meals, and lots of distractions. The immediate challenge would be getting into a disciplined routine of work, exercise, and life balance. It took a few days but, true to form, I was up early doing a few hours of work every morning before breakfast - I am pretty sure few colleagues noticed the slight interruption of 5:00 a.m. emails 😌 Of course over the first week I changed time zones 3 times, so correspondence may have appeared at obscenely later times like 7:00 a.m. CST.
Here is one of the many views from my "floating office". I cannot explain the inspiration I get from being in a different place and space. Time will tell about the actual productivity but so far so good 🤭 I work, find food when I need to, move my station as the day unfolds, exercise, and even put in a nap (and I am not typically a napper).
And when the day is done I seek out whatever social connection or other distraction I need to recharge for the next day. I do get a lot of time to myself for reflection - even though there are lots of people around I can be as engaged or not and there is plenty of space to hang without necessairly having to interact. Apparently, the ship is not full and on sea days there have been lots of deck space to enjoy. When all else fails, there is the solitude of the stateroom.
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