It's hard to believe but I am now over half-way through my contract, and I thought it would be good to summarize what the cruise-ship lifestyle has the potential to offer. Working on a ship has a the potential to be a destructive experience, but it also has a lot of potential be an incredible growth opportunity on many different levels.

The obvious destructive habits that people pick up on these ships begin with heavy drinking. This ship in general is actually not too bad for this, since the access to alcohol is not quite as limitless as it is on some other ships I've heard about, although it still is incredibly prevalent. Musicians and production cast in particular can get into the habit of compulsive drinking even during the day, since there is so much free time to kill to the point that they do it out of boredom. Luckily that has not been the case with the people I've known on this ship, but I've heard many stories about it on other ships.

In addition to excessive drinking as a potential destructive habit on ships is excessive eating. There is 24 hour access to food on this ship of all different kinds, and if you know nothing about nutrition or just don't care, then you can really eat as much as you want of some terribly unhealthy food. Again, the risk is greater for those of us with more free time, and some people get into the habit of watching movies in bed all day, snacking on chips and leading very lethargic lives. This is okay obviously from time to time, but gets pretty bad if it's your entire life. 

A third destructive habit on ships, again specifically for musicians and others who have lots of free time, is a destructive outlook and attitude. For those who have never experienced this kind of lifestyle on a ship, it's pretty difficult to imagine what there is to complain or be negative about, but human beings are incredible at adapting to new situations, and a lot of people seem to forget very quickly just how good they have it on ships. With no real-world problems to complain about, they start to complain about pretty trivial things. This I think is principally a result of wasting their time on the ship and losing motivation to do anything, which is thee danger of having too much unspent free time. 

As I said, there is a lot of potential for a very unhealthy lifestyle. There is, however, plenty of good that can be achieved on ships, and if you decide to focus on these things it is actually a lot easier to get them done here than on land.

For myself, One of my main things that I've been devoting time to on the ship is going to the gym. It adds structure to my days, and obviously has great health benefits not only for my physical health but my mental health as well. The nice thing about having health as a focus on a ship is that, because I don't want to hinder the positive effects of going to the gym, it has encouraged me to eat healthily, and limit my drinking to a reasonable amount.

In addition, for musicians, there is plenty of time to get practicing done. Of course the material that you perform on the ship you will adapt to and learn very quickly and not need to practice after a couple of weeks, and so you will have to come up with your own materials to work on.  Practicing is one thing I would like to focus on more for the last half of my contract.

There are plenty of other good uses of your time to come up with on this ship. Writing a blog is a great habit that I've been able to get into to help keep people up to date about my experience as well as giving me a time to focus and reflect on what I'm experiencing here. I spend a lot of time reading as well. Other people I've talked to have mentioned things like writing music, practicing gymnastics (for the gymnists in the production cast), learning new languages, drawing, playing basketball, watching tv series, and more. 

Perhaps the best experience to get out of working on a ship is life experience. You can become a more worldly person not only from traveling to the different counties, but also from meeting hundreds of new people, forming friendships very quickly and also having to see new friends go home at the end of their contracts. The range of personalities you encounter on ships is pretty vast, and keeps things interesting.

And of course, being on a cruise ship is a very sheltered existence without any real-world stresses, like deadlines, agendas, having to make food, clean stuff, plan stuff, remember anything important, etc, not to mention you have very little access to the media at large which means you are not constantly being overloaded with information. 

I will stop this post here as I could go on and on about this stuff, and I might add more to it later.  

Thanks for reading!