When I quit my cruise ship job and didn’t go back
Something funny happens at the end of every cruise ship contract. You get a message from HR. You stare at it. Close it. Open it again. You think, maybe just one more. And then you say yes, because the money is there and the alternative is scary and at least you know what you're getting.
I did that more times than I'd like to admit.
My last contract ended 30 September 2024. A couple of weeks later, HR messaged asking me to send in my documents – the usual drill before signing on again. I told them I was outstation. Which I was. But I wasn't ready to say it out loud yet.
They followed up ten days later. Are you rejoining?
That was when I quit my cruise ship job. Quietly, over WhatsApp. And then I didn't talk about it for eighteen months. Not here, not to anyone.
I wasn’t as happy on board as it might have looked.
People see the ports, the photos. They see the facade.
They don't see what working on a cruise ship is really like – the politics, the overtime, what it's like when your workplace is also your home. The people you don't get along with, the ones you thought were close friends until you realised it was all surface level – they're at dinner with you, in the corridor outside your cabin, on the same tender boat to shore.
And then there's the schedule. When to eat, when to sleep, when you're allowed ashore – all dictated by operations. Most people accept this as part of the job. I understood it too. But somewhere along the way I started feeling like I had handed over the basic rhythms of my own life to someone else's timetable.
I never had the guts to quit mid-contract. Some people do – they reach a breaking point, write the letter, pay for their own flight home. I'm too shy for that. Too afraid of the confrontation, the meeting with the manager, the awkward handover. For me it was always easier to count down the days and tell myself: next time I won't sign another one.
And then I would sign another one.
Mostly because the money was good, relatively speaking. For someone from a family where a stable income wasn't just preferred but necessary, walking away without something on the other side wasn't simple. It was a risk with real weight.
But somewhere during the stillness of Covid, something shifted. I started paying attention to people building income on their own terms – people who were creating freedom for themselves. Free from a boss, free to manage their own time, free to travel on their own schedule. I wanted to know if that was possible for someone like me.
So when that message came asking if I was rejoining, I already knew what I needed to say. I texted my boss first – I didn't want her finding out from HR. And then I said no.
Yes, I did send a proper resignation email after.
Working on a cruise ship isn't just a job. It's where you live, who you're surrounded by, how you explain yourself to people.
I left with a plan. A quiet one I hadn't told anyone about yet – I was going to make it work online, figure it out before anyone noticed I'd left. I told my mother I could always go back if I needed to. Which was technically true. I just couldn't imagine actually doing it.
To focus, I deactivated social media. Around the same time I forgot to renew my phone number and it expired – this happened more than once throughout the year. Somewhere along the way I lost contact with almost everyone. Friends, colleagues, people I'd worked with for years. Not that we were keeping in close contact anyway. But still.
I knew the travel came with the job – it's why I joined in the first place. What I didn't expect was how much I'd feel its absence. No shore leave in new ports. No trips during sign-off. Now I barely leave the house.
And without the ships, I didn't just lose the travel. I lost the identity that came with it. I didn't know how much of me was tied to that label until it was gone.
The freedom I left for hasn't looked much like freedom yet.
This is the part where I tell you it all worked out. It hasn't.
The first few months I was excited. I had ideas I'd been sitting on that I finally had time to work on. Someone said to me early on, "so you just want to blog?" – and I remember bristling at it. It felt like a small question for something that felt big to me.
What followed was a cycle I didn't expect – learning, then doubting, moving forward, then losing momentum. There were months I could barely open my laptop. That cycle hasn't really stopped.
There were moments I thought about finding something temporary, just to ease the pressure. But I was afraid that if I gave myself a way out, I'd take it. So I didn't.
I don't have a clean ending to give you. When I left the ships, I didn't just leave a job. I left the income, the travel, the label I'd been using to introduce myself for years. I'm still working out what comes next. But I'd rather give you the honest version of this story than wait for a version that has it all figured out.
So. Hi. I'm still here.
Similar Posts
