Cruising

So what are our thoughts on taking a cruise? I’ve never done it and I’m not planning on anything. I’ve just been thinking about it lately because I read David Foster Wallace’s essay “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.”

Wallace wrote about his seven-night cruise and all the rituals and crowd behaviors inherent when people set sail. He had some good points about how the staff can seem eerily cheery and everything is so micromanaged. There was a lot of insight into the sheer scale of the cruise and the psychology of wanting to get away.

There was some of it that I had to take with a grain of salt. Not to be indelicate, but Wallace didn’t seem like he had the right temperament to enjoy a cruise and its forced merriment, given that he did have problems with depression. He spent a lot of time in his cabin ordering room service.

I have definitely had those tendencies, too, since I have spent some free time on business trips eating alone in my room. But if I did ever go on a cruise, I’d definitely go into it wanting to be out in the open, eating at the buffet with everybody else because otherwise, what’s the point? I’d make sure I went into it with the right frame of mind.

A cruise would be more fun in a big group because then we would have our own table and there would me more potential pairings for activities so if one person didn’t want to play shuffleboard with me, I could find someone else who would. My main objection to the cruise lifestyle would be the need for formality. I’d be willing to go business casual or wear a suit (if I must) but I have no interest in wearing a tux to dinner. Sorry — I’m on vacation. It won’t be sweatpant city but I’m not buying formalwear.

My other problem with a cruise would be the constant overstimulation. As I said, if I ever cruised, I would be in a mindset that I would be up for anything but my idea of vacation is more to unplug. This is why my idea of communal fun is sitting around the deck at Seatowne, chatting and drinking and looking at the clouds. I’d be up for activity but I would also need to sit around in a deck chair and read for a bit. I wonder if this attitude depends on where you live. Wallace wrote another essay and observed that people in his rural Illinois home go on vacation and want to be stimulated and he theorized it’s because the Midwest is a little more open. He noted that on the East Coast it’s different, since we’re already crowded and overstimulated and need to decompress when we go away. I think that’s true.

Another reason why I have to take Wallace with a grain of salt is that he wrote the essay as an assignment. He traveled by himself and had to work so of course it wasn’t as much fun as it could be. For the same reason, I can’t write an accurate essay about Disneyland during my business trips to Anaheim because I have work to do and can’t enjoy it like a tourist.

Anyway, we’re not going on a cruise but that essay just made me think.