Tuesday, January 26, 2016

I'm really bad at social media

Sure, I can get on FB 10 times a day and see what’s going on in your life, the pictures you post and see the places you’ve been. But when it comes to sharing what’s going on in my life it’s pretty bad. I had been posting on a blog for some time, taking pictures quite often and putting random things on FB regularly but it slowly stopped.


I’ve been home for a week now and one of the most common questions that I get is how’s life without a cell phone? Great! It’s real great when I get to enjoy where I am rather than being distracted by the dinging of a notification or the call of a friend.

Keeping contact with people is hard, really hard when you live on a different continent and the time difference is different for the last 5 people you talked to. It happens though, I keep contact with people. Across the globe, living in places 9-12 hours away (that’s time zones). My mind thinks in time zones. That’s really hard to comprehend I imagine. This friend lives in Seattle, that friend lives in Brisbane. I wish I could talk to him, but he’s in St. Louis and it’s 3 AM there. What’s going on on the ship? I’ll find out in the morning because my friends will responds while I sleep. (I’m not saying any of that to brag, I’m saying it because it’s real. Period.)

What’s going on in your life? That’s the second question I normally get. It’s busy. Really busy some times and some times lots of free time. The thing is I never have time to be bored. During this time at home, I’m visiting friends, driving here, flying there and I have to say it’s busy, but pretty much stress free. My job on the ship is Senior Chef and that means many things. The kitchen workers start at 5 AM and finish at 7 PM. And even when we don’t have people working the food even gets served at midnight for the night shift workers. The job is never over, as soon as one meal is served the other gets started and with my job the prep starts sometimes three months in advance. I was asked on December 23 in the midst of prepping for the Christmas Brunch, “What do you want to cook for Easter? They needed to know in 4 hours." b/c that’s when the order was due in the Netherlands so that it could be purchased, put on a container and shipped to Madagascar. So, if you’re wondering what we’re having for Easter Brunch it’s lamb and ham. 


I’m a big picture person. I like to see the overarching thing that’s going on and see where things are coming from and where they’re going. There’s details in that big picture that are many times hard for me to explain. Many details. Maybe that’s why I’m so bad at social media. Everything I see posted online is small minute details of people’s daily life and I’m often wondering about how their life is, how they’re doing and what their struggles are, because we all have struggles. We’re stronger when we share them.

So, if you see me ask questions. If you see this, send a message. I promise I’ll respond. I think the important thing is to be direct and specific because if you’re not most likely you’ll get “Good, fine, busy, Happy to be home, Glad to see you” And if you get a message from me, it’s because I care about you and how your life is. Maybe not what you had for breakfast or what you’re doing this weekend. But I want to hear about that thing you were worrying about while driving to work. If we’re in the same room, that means you’re pretty important to me. And if we’re not in the same room, yes, you are still important to me the circumstances have it that I can’t be in 10 places at the same time.