Hello, world!

Well, this wasn’t something that I planned on actively doing. It is something that I have considered over the past few years, but after really thinking about it, here we are. I have decided to once again venture into the world of blogging and trying to run a website and hoping for the best and seeing what comes of it.

I’ll assume that almost everyone who starts reading here knows me, at least to start, but if you have stumbled across this through a Google search, which means I was actually able to optimize search results, allow me to introduce myself.

Hi, I’m Cat.

I tend to jokingly refer to myself as “a keeper of books” who has an intensely strong love of writing and an addiction to coffee, all while being perpetually tired. When I decide to not joke around, the actual answer is I’m currently a library assistant who is currently a second-semester graduate school student who genuinely does love writing and does enjoy coffee but isn’t nearly as addicted as people think. My degree is in Information and Library Science, which, at least to me, sounds a lot better than saying I will have a Master’s in Information, which is what the title is at other universities. Having the rest of the degree sounds considerably less pretentious to me, something that my very sweet and supportive boyfriend likes to tell me that it’s something I should be proud of. For me, it feels just a little too much.

It would feel strange to write this intro without taking a moment to introduce my boyfriend, who is a huge part of why I started this little project in the first place.

Lucas has been my best friend for what feels like forever. He is currently a merchant mariner apprentice in the first few weeks of his five-month-long official formal training to become an officer outside of a classroom setting. He still has two years left of his education, although the lines of his theoretical education feel slightly blurred as he will have to partake in a second apprenticeship, another long five-month voyage, at the end of his final year of school. While he does not graduate officially until after his second apprenticeship, he will be back in a classroom setting for a year. I know that his school year is split into two, but with Lucas’s apprenticeships bracketing his time in school, time doesn’t feel as linear to me.

And oh, yeah, something important to note: we have been long distance for the entirety of our relationship.

I am a US Citizen, and Lucas is very much from the Netherlands. It’s nothing short of a miracle that we ever met in the first place, a story I’ll share at a different time, and the circumstances surrounding our relationship are equal parts a blessing and far more painful than I care to admit. We have been fortunate to learn to navigate the long-distance aspect for the entirety of our knowing each other, but with Lucas’s career, we are now long-distance on top of long-distance.

According to many people I’ve talked to, it’s very implied that this new chapter of our lives and relationship should be straight-forward, but the truth behind it is it’s not. It is decidedly more complicated and with a new set of challenges that go further than just “long-distance.”

While the concept of long-distance isn’t exactly a new or novel concept, for some fascinating reason, the bigger issue comes from being the partner of someone in this career path. While there are half a dozen military partner support groups that exist on social media, there appears to be considerably less for those with a merchant mariner. There are multiple resources for those with partners working in other offshore occupations, such as those on oil rigs or research vessels, but not so much for an industry that makes up a huge component of the logistics industry. While the resources technically exist, they’re few and far between when it comes to being written in English, or even Dutch, for that matter.

So, to try and bridge the gap and see if others are in the same boat (no pun intended) in either situation, here we are.

Not only will I talk about my experiences being in a long-distance relationship, but I will also talk about what it’s like to be on the other side of the merchant sailor career path; as a partner and family member to someone within the industry.

I’ll end this first post here, but I hope that you’ll join me on this little project and journey.

Until next time.

With love from abroad,
Cat