It’s a ship. When I first got the contract, before I ever set foot onboard, I spent a lot of time calling it in a boat. There are many hours of online training (what I lovingly refer to as brainwashing) before you arrive. They make it very clear that it’s a SHIP. I tried to be subversive, I really did. But eventuality, you can’t help but drink the koolaid. I call it a ship and I resist the urge to correct my friends when they mislabel her. Ships are different than boats. Ships are big as fuck. This is a floating city. You cannot jump off and go for a swim. I am writing this post from the middle of the Indian Ocean, halfway between Perth and Mauritius. This big bitch is the only thing keeping all 3000 plus people here alive. We are very far from land, far from any other shipping routes, far from anyone who could help us. We are on our own.

Ship life is not land life. Here’s an average day in my life back in NYC. I wake up whenever I want, usually around 930am. I roll around in bed for 30 minutes. I get up, take my pills, drink my AG1, feed my cat and make a little Nespresso latte with oat milk. I cook some oatmeal that I mix with yogurt and painstakingly cut up all my favorite fruit and nuts into tiny little pieces to mix in. I might put on a record. I sit with my breakfast and write in my journal. The rest of the day consists of any or all of the following activities: Go to the gym, drop off/pick up laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning the house, admin, meetings, therapy, make a salad with 100 ingredients just the way I like it, Best friend Carrie pops upstairs during her lunch break and eats her gross smelling tuna in front of me, shit/shower/shave, dry my hair, set my hair in curlers, nap, paint my face (stage makeup), pack my gig bag, commute into Manhattan, host a show (my actual job), commute home, wash face, smoke weed, eat dinner, read, sleep. Sometimes I’m also blessed with social obligations like birthdays and dinners and supporting my artistic friends.

Life onboard is not ruled by days of the week. When I am here I usually have no idea what day it is. Ship life is dictated by sea days vs port days. This categorization decides what the day will hold. Since we are currently at sea for many days in a row while we reposition from Sydney to Athens, I will describe as best I can a day in the life at sea. Please keep in mind, as previously stated, I have an unusual experience among the crew. I am only in one show and that show only happens once or twice a cruise, even less often during the repo, so I have WAY more time on my hands than the average crew member. They work 10 hour days with no days off.

OK. Wake up whenever I want, usually 930am. (This is trickier right now because we move into a new time zone near daily so we have to change our clocks before bed every night. Right now we’re gaining an hour of sleep, after Africa we turn east and we will loose an hour of sleep.) Roll around in bed for 30 minutes. Get up, take my pills, drink my AG1, get dressed in gym clothes and put on my name badge. We have to wear our name badge everywhere at all times. I take my little ceramic mug that my friend Vikki got me in Melbourne and I walk from my cabin along the A1A (the main crew thoroughfare on deck 4 that traverses the whole ship from stern to aft) to the crew mess hall at the back of the ship. I get a double espresso and add oat milk. At this point I have missed crew breakfast hours which end at 9am so I take a crew elevator up to deck 15 to the Galley. The Galley is the passenger dining hall which I am privileged enough to be allowed to use. I get an overnight oats and a plain yogurt and mix them together. I take a banana and do my best to cut it up into little bits to mix it in.

After breakfast I go to the gym which is right next to the Galley. I didn’t really learn about fitness or strength training until my first contract. I resisted, I made a lot of excuses. Onboard I have no excuses. I have access to a physical therapist, a gym and a bunch of wildly fit 22 year old dancers and circus performers. So now I’m obsessed with working out but I refuse to make it my whole personality so I’ll make this part quick. I have a new fitness program designed for me by a friend back home. I do weight training followed by cardio and then I stretch while I drink my little protein drink. I go back to my cabin, shower and get dressed into the second outfit of the day. I pack my little backpack with my laptop, journal and book. I eat lunch, I go to one of my favorite sitting spots, either inside or outside depending on the weather and the number of passengers. The number one rule for crew is “SAILORS FIRST”. This means while we have the right to enjoy the ship, guests always take precedence. So if too many passengers are on my favorite couch on deck 7, I go somewhere else. Sometimes it’s hard to find a place to sit and I wander the ship like a weird little ghost before giving up and going back to my cabin. This often spells trouble and by trouble I mean a nap. When the ship is slowly and gently rocking back and forth it’s like a sedative, it makes one very sleepy. When I have nothing better to do I’ve been known to take a 2 hour nap in the middle of the day. If I do manage to find a place to settle, that is when I’ll do my writing/reading/admin for the day.

Evening approaches. This is when things get tricky if I don’t have a show. I wake up from my weird nap, put on yet another outfit and find my way to dinner. There are several dinner options: Crew mess, Galley or if I’m lucking sometimes I have a dinner reservation at one of the restaurants onboard. I’ll usually run into friends at one of the food places and enjoy their company. Sometimes after dinner I go listen to a band or watch someone else’s show. Sometime’s there’s a crew party and I pretend I’m 19 and push through til after midnight. Sometimes I’m in bed by 930pm. Sometimes it’s the entertainment department spa night and we get to steam and soak after midnight. Sometimes there’s a secret party in the engineers workshop, but you didn’t hear it from me.

Let’s say I have a show. I get to the venue 15 minutes before call time to stretch and chat with Charlie, my show partner. I do a sound check and then head into the dressing room while Charlie does his aerial rigging check. I paint my face, put on my costume and wait until the five minute call. Charlie goes out onstage about 10 minutes before me to start his pre show bit. I join him and the show begins. It lasts about one hour and is HIGH ENERGY. After taking photos with the crowd we come backstage and recharge. Charlie fixes his makeup which he has completely sweated off and after about 45 minutes we head back out onstage and do it all again. Our show is very audience participation heavy so the level of energy and enthusiasm the crowd gives us has a big effect on the quality of the show. Sometimes we have 500 people going absolutely apeshit and sometimes we have 100 people just staring at us. Thats showbiz baby.

Once we are done with the reposition and we get settled into the routine of our summer itinerary in Greece and Croatia, things will be different. We will port every day. These will be the same ports we enjoyed last year and I am very excited to get back to them. I have my favorite spots, shops, restaurants, beaches and parks. Being able to get off the ship is important for ones sanity in the same way that getting out of New York City on a regular basis is the best way to be able to stay there long term. Port days change my routine quite a lot. Thank god. I’m not a big fan of routine no matter how many mental health professionals tell me it’s good for me.

The biggest difference between ship life and land life is responsibility vs freedom. On land in the real world I am absolutely free to do whatever I want. I can go where I want whenever, eat what I want, fuck who I want, do drugs, say what I want, dress how I want, etc. But I’m also responsible for everything. I have to pay rent and buy food and clean my house and take my cat to the vet. Being a crew member on a ship is like being a kid again. I have very few responsibilities other than the one job I was hired to do. My job is fun and easy and I have more creative freedom than other cast members in other shows, but at the same time someone is always watching and making sure I don’t say cunt on the microphone. I also have very little freedom. I have to eat in certain places at certain hours and wear the right clothing and the correct footwear and can’t flirt with passengers or sit by the pool or order a drink directly from the bartender. Not to mention I can’t ever have a blood alcohol content over .05%. Responsibility vs. Freedom. I wouldn’t choose this life on a permanent basis, but as I learned last summer, I’m willing to sacrifice my freedom for six months of income with no expenses.

At the moment, with so many sea days and so few shows, I’m basically being paid to be away from my real life. My job is to stay sane. I consider it my responsibility to keep a low profile, follow the rules, don’t piss anyone off and don’t complain. Whenever that starts to annoy me, I remember that I have never had savings in my entire adult life and now I do. I’ve sublet my apartment in NYC and I don’t have to pay for food. After last summer I took my contract money and opened a high yield savings account. I didn’t even know what a high yield saving account was before. So yeah, I can wait until 11am to eat salad and try not to say fuck too many times onstage.

Oh and tomorrow is my birthday! I’ll be saying hello to the last year of my 30s while about 1500 nautical miles from land in every direction 🙂