How Do I Spend My Time Onboard?

Hello again! I'm still out to sea up in beautiful Alaska, and I thought I'd address one of the biggest questions that I get onboard. "What do you do with your free time onboard the ship?" I'm very fortunate as a musician to have a lot of free time. When I've done other jobs on ships, often I worked 7 days a week, 12 (or more shhhhh) hours per day. Free time was a myth I'd heard about. Forget weekends! However, whenever I'm a musician onboard, aside from the 24/7 of watching what I eat and drink, how loud my environment is, how much rest I get etc, I'm only working (performing) for up to 4 hours per day. So people wonder, "What do you do with the other 20 hours?"

Just like on land, everyone with free time will spend it differently so I can't speak for all crew members and ship entertainers, but what I like to do with my free time is work on my business! My strong suit is NOT routine. I don't always do the same thing from day, but what I DO do consistently is work away on one of my many projects relating to my entertainment business. For example, before joining this contract, I decided to order one of the products that I designed for people who love to travel or cruise, and test it for quality.

If you have had a look around my website, you will have seen that I offer some products with my adult coloring images, and a teaser for a future coloring book. The coloring book is on hold, because I'm trying to convince a particular cruise line to sell the books onboard. I made my coloring sheets pretty detailed and complex because I know that when people are looking to relax on vacation, sometimes coloring can feel meditative. It's not something you sit down and quickly finish, it's something that satisfies like a 1,000 piece puzzle. The joy is in the process. Convincing corporate entities of this has been difficult as my designs have been deemed "Too difficult for our guests." I beg to differ, and so I'm taking matters into my own hands and selling things with my designs on my own.

As far as the coloring books go, I'm still waiting until I can manage to produce them in bulk because I think the quality of the paper is important for this type of coloring, but I've been fortunate enough to find high quality print-on-demand partners for exciting products like hats, tote bags, and other items which can be both colored, and used! Print on demand does drive the cost up a fair amount, but it's been very good for someone like me who doesn't have a home base or a warehouse.

This brings me back to my original point. What EXACTLY do I do? Well, aside from making sure that things are available on my website and Etsy, filling out the descriptions, taking and adding photos and videos, setting prices, I also do quality control. I purchased one of the adult coloring tote bags with the "Ports of Call: Bari, Italy" design on it. (Find it HERE). I'm trying out different brands of fabric markers on it to be sure I recommend something that delivers the best result. So far I've tried two different kinds of markers, and it looks so good! One of the brands was an absolute NO (the green didn't bleed, but the red bled 1/4 inch outside of the area I colored!!). BUT the second brand works so well!

So far, the "Edding Textile Pens" were the worthless ones, and the Sharpie "Creative Marker Paint Pens" work beautifully. The Sharpie markers claim to be "water resistant" which is not giving me as much confidence as fabric pens that claim to be washing machine safe, but for the tote bags, I figure it doesn't matter because I don't remember the last time I through a tote bag in the washing machine. I've ordered some different fabric markers as well and will test them next.

So if you see me around the ship on my computer or relaxing and coloring a bag or a hat, I'm probably "working" but I only make things that I would also like, so really, it's just an excuse for me to relax and work on some art haha. I'm also going to begin to add ship party themed clothing and ship themed cabin (room) decorations. I'm always trying out new ideas, and adding things that I find to be fun or helpful as a person who lives at sea. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please find me on the contact page HERE and let me know what products or places you want me to add! I'll add new itinerary themes as I go, and have started with the Mediterranean. What should I do next?

Coloring the Bari Market scene on the Adult Coloring Travel Tote bag