Like many people, I hit a rut in my late 30s. My career felt stalled, and my life mostly consisted of work and Netflix. I was bored, flabby, and felt like I needed something big to snap me out of my funk.
So, when my 40th birthday came around, I did something completely out of character: I booked my first-ever cruise. Solo.
The solo travel part wasn’t out of character — I’d spent most of my 20s backpacking alone. For most of my 30s, I’d traveled with my spouse, but going on an adventure by myself was well within my comfort zone.
It was the cruise part that was weird.
“No having fun,” my spouse told me after I’d booked my passage. “That’s not what you’re there for.”
“Of course not,” I assured them. “I definitely won’t have any fun without you.”
I didn’t imagine that there would be much fun on board that I would be interested in. Cruises, I’d thought, were perpetual drunken pool parties — the kinds of parties I’d never been invited to and wouldn’t have had fun at even if someone had thrown a pity invite my way.
This particular cruise seemed better than most options — the Queen Mary 2 featured fancy afternoon tea service, if nothing else.
My spouse, who was cruise-curious, was possibly just a little bit jealous.
I wasn’t going on the cruise to have fun
I’d chosen this particular experience not for the cruise itself, but because it was part of the Rebirth Your Book Writing Retreat, which happened to take place on a transatlantic crossing. It was this writing retreat — with its promise of expert instruction plus time to focus — that enticed me to get on board a ship.
Being an artist had been my childhood ambition. But like most childhood ambitions, it fell by the wayside under familial and societal pressure to do something “practical” with my life. But the itch to create was still there. I was hoping that a writing retreat would reignite that spark.
Still, I remained uncertain about the cruise aspect. All I had been looking for were some workshops followed by uninterrupted writing time. Couldn’t we have done this shindig on dry land?
As it turned out, the writing cruise went swimmingly (despite my never once going swimming while aboard). I connected with another solo writer to share the cost of a cabin, and I spent a blissful week talking about writing with smart, interesting people. Maybe, I reflected, the trick to putting a thinking person onto a cruise ship was just finding a bunch of other thinking people to take the cruise with them.
The $3,000 cost of the transatlantic cruise, plus the workshop fee, felt like money well spent. I ate a lot of great food, went swing dancing, watched some talented performers, drank a lot of wine, and generally lived it up, age 40-style.
“Okay,” I mentally apologized to my spouse, “I might be having a bit of fun.”
Back on land, I started questioning my career choices
The real difficulty, as it turned out, came when I got home.
I had thought that the writing retreat would scratch my creative itch, and I’d return home to my regular career as a government contractor and keep writing on weekends. Instead, I had a full-blown midlife crisis.
“What the hell am I doing with my life?” I thought, as I stared at yet another spreadsheet.
“Do I really want a practical career?” I questioned, as I read through a pile of reports.
The idea of a midlife crisis seemed cliché. Doesn’t everyone question their life choices when they hit 40?
I still wanted financial stability and to make use of my degree in International Development, but I couldn’t deny that spending a week focused on writing made me want to focus on writing even more.
I’m still working out how to transition from my current career to a literary one, or if I’m somehow going to combine a full-time corporate job with what I hope will become a full-time writing job. But I do know that my 40th birthday present to myself has made me refocus on what I actually want in life, and has made me more certain that writing is my future.
In the months since the cruise, I’ve made significant progress on my book draft, written a few articles, and made a list of literary agents to approach when my book is done. I’ve also segmented my schedule into concrete writing hours that fit around my regular job. I’m working toward channeling my midlife crisis in a positive, productive way.
Next year, my spouse and I will take a cruise together, on an itinerary of their choice, purely for fun.
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