Locked Out

Dearest Rachel –

Really, it’s hard enough to get myself motivated to do actual work while I’m on this trip most days. Between the go-go-go of days that we’re in port, and the subsequent lethargy of sea days (compounded by having to deal with a restraining cold), I find myself dealing with a distinct lack of enthusiasm when it comes to doing… certain tasks that would ordinarily be part and parcel of the daily grind back at home.

To be sure, there are certain other things that I’ve been surprisingly consistent with. After the trip to Japan last year had me never darkening the door of the fitness center aboard the Quest, I could be forgiven for thinking the same thing was likely to happen this time around as well. The fact that I’ve been there every healthy sea day (and probably a couple days when I wasn’t entirely) comes as much of a shock to me as it might to anyone else. It may have something to do with the fact – and I know I’ve made this observation before, but it still surprises me all the same – that I’m aware that certain people are actually watching me on the exercise app. You’d think it wouldn’t matter to me what other people think, but for some strange reason, it does. I’m not sure why, although I have my suspicions.

But that’s a new discovery about myself, one having to do with a more active routine. This particular letter has more to do about the more sedentary work I’ve done for most of my life in one form or another, and assumed I’d have no trouble maintaining over this more extended period of time. And for the first few weeks, this assumption seemed to be pretty well borne out. Granted, there was a point where the normal deadline was moved up for last month – not impossibly so, just enough that it might be touch-and-go as to whether I could have everything together in time – before being essentially eliminated altogether through no input on my part. I still managed to scrape half of it together by the tighter deadline before deciding not to break my head over the rest of it (partly because the undone remainder had a few tangles in it that I wouldn’t be able to deal with in time).

But over the last week, whenever I try to get back into it, it seems that I’ve been locked out. Not out of the accounting software, but the supplemental sites that record registrations and the like. I had no problems when we were in American or Australian space, but once we got into Indonesian waters, everything suddenly clamped down. I had the same problem with regard to trying to pay my own bills; payment simply return of blank screen with a warning that this site cannot be accessed. To be honest, if somebody from Indonesia wanted to pay my bills, I’d tell the company to let them. Considering that it is me trying to pay them, I’m more than just a little annoyed.

But as you might guess, this means that I’m being given that one more excuse not to be particularly motivated when it comes to doing actual work – even when I am actually motivated to do it, which is a rare enough occurrence as it is. Circumstances just conspire to insist, “uh-uh, buddy; you’re on vacation, you’d best act like it.” And for the most part, I’m fine with this, but I am starting to get a little worried. A day or a week away from all this is no big deal, but once it stretches into a month or so, then it gets to be a problem. These assignments have to be done on a regular basis. Will I be able to access these sites going forward?

Part of me isn’t particularly worried; I had no trouble working on things last year, so I think I can safely assume that Korean and Japanese waters will not post the same problems as these here in Indonesia and the Philippines do. I admit to being puzzled as to the why, but there’s not a whole lot that I can do about it at the moment. It’s not a permanent situation, just a temporary pause in my otherwise perhaps too frenetic self-imposed pace.

At the same time, there is still that part of me that is that self, imposing these deadlines and requirements on myself; it can’t help itself from fretting about whether (and when) things will be restored to what it considers to be ‘normal.’ What if, it worries, I get too used to this pace? I might let these deadlines slide, and I won’t be able to get back on track once I’m able to deal with them. I mean, there was some time during that illness where I had basically recovered, but wasn’t getting back to my writing and editing schedule. And while none of that has a deadline to it, so it can go by the boards if necessary, what if this apathetic attitude gets carried over to real deadlines, like payments and paperwork? If those are allowed to slide, heaven knows what could happen.

Yeah, my superego doesn’t make things easy on me, and it’s worse because most of me actually agrees with him; I’d like to have a little more of this taken care of, if not necessarily all of it (because that chews up a lot of time, to go through an entire month’s worth of registrations), and I don’t like having bills hanging over my head. But what can you do when you’re locked out of the site because, for whatever reason, the place doesn’t trust you if you’re dialing in from Indonesia or the Philippines?

You’d at least think my superego could rest easy, knowing that most of the rest of me agrees with it. But yeah, “resting easy” isn’t part of its skill set. So with that in mind, honey, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.