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Ship life begins with a series of orientations. If you are one of the many who stay longer than 3 months then you go through a second series of "long-term" orientations. This begins with a talk called "How to Survive Ship Life". It is actually good. It talks about signs of stress and unhealthy coping mechanisms: drowning yourself in food, on the Internet, etc..

It also covers the phases that crew go through when living on board the ship. The first phase is the honeymoon. The second is hostility. The last phase is home.

HONEYMOON.
Yes, there was a honeymoon phase. We were excitedly meeting a lot of people. We enjoyed our jobs. The room we were given was bigger than we expected. We were heading to Liberia. There was all the junk food you could want on board.

HOSTILITY.
We became tired. Our jobs seemed relentless at times and we didn't see much of each other. We lost the ability to gain energy by being around other people and began hiding away just to recuperate. Our room was windowless and unbearably loud 24 hours a day. We ate too much. I buried myself in my computer and blog. We were confined to the ship by our lack of driving privileges. And there was too much junk food everywhere.

HOME.
We have recently entered this phase. We are sad to see people go and really miss them. I changed jobs to being a writer (with some photography and graphic design) which allows us more time together. We were offered to house sit a family cabin (windows and relative quiet). We began really valuing the people that were still here and came out of hiding. And we gained control of our junk food intake.

We will be sad to leave, but also excited about what lies ahead.