Thankfully, we got our money back from the world cruise debacle because Mike had the foresight to put each of our payments on credit cards. So, thank you, Amex and Chase, for having awesome customer service and refunding us without issue. Others weren’t as fortunate. To my knowledge, the cruise operator still hasn’t repaid the customers who wired cash directly to them.

And so that’s why earlier this year the FBI came to visit us in our cute new house: to ask us what we know about the management team over there. Of course, we told them everything we could and tried not to act nervous or weird. Towards the end of our interview, one agent mentioned he had read this very blog! I was so surprised and delighted that I responded by asking a FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS AGENT how he had found my published-on-the-internet Substack blog… So. Embarrassing!

As of this writing, we don’t know of any charges that have been filed but they have continued to pursue the case. We also don’t know if anything will really happen if they do file charges against Miray. And now the new administration is likely to change the FBI’s leadership and priorities, so we’ll see what happens. Other than hoping others are made whole, we are putting the whole thing behind us.

So for us, that’s pretty much that. We spent our year getting the house set up, celebrating several awesome milestones, and trying to stay cool.

In 2025, we want to continue to focus on staying healthy, traveling even more, hanging out with family and friends, and exploring Florida on road trips. There’s a lot to learn and see!

As we close out 2024, Mike and I would like to wish everyone reading this a safe, happy, and healthy holiday season and year ahead.

We have learned a lot in the last year or so, not least of which is to be adventurous, be smart, and be flexible when things appear to be going sideways. It’s probably meant to be in the end.

Happy Holidays!

Julie and Mike

Meanwhile, our little ill-fated excursion has been in the news…

The New York Times, CNN, Good Morning America, and other news outlets are covering the Life at Sea cruises debacle. Their reports have been surprisingly accurate so I don’t need to recount much here. In short, back in late November, Miray promised to issue us refunds in three monthly payments starting in mid-December. Can you guess what happened next? Nothing. Shocking!

As usual, they are behind schedule.

The residents (are we still considered residents? is it too late for that term now?) are all pissed. We are pissed that the current Miray employees have chronically over-promised and under-delivered. Although, I guess they’ve been consistent that way. They continue to claim that they are working tirelessly on things, just to flop around like a fish on a dock. It’s exhausting to watch.

We are pissed at the former Miray employees—namely Kendra Holmes, the so-called CEO—who at least weekly during the sales process told us all, quite condescendingly and ad nauseam, not to worry or complain because their team was extremely experienced and knew exactly what they were doing. But, when things started to go awry, she went completely radio silent for weeks on end, quit the company and vanished entirely when the proverbial ship hit the fan (or didn’t leave the dock? or didn’t, you know, exist?!?). She never even told us she had left; she simply updated her LinkedIn profile dates from Miray and ghosted us all when we needed her to step up the most.

(Actually, to be fair, that’s not completely true. She did eventually record and post a video to sell us on the new venture she was now the CEO of—another three-year cruise in development with a new company and some members of the old Miray team! Hooray! Can’t wait! Now, I usually hesitate to criticize other women leaders, but I could write a thesis on her lack of self-awareness, communication, organization, focus, leadership and integrity…)

And, naturally, many of the residents are even pissed at each other, which tends to happen in a leadership accountability vacuum (see: airplane travel, society under racism, Trump in any circumstance). We bicker about when and whether to believe Miray, how far behind schedule Miray is allowed to be, what the appropriate next steps are, who has borne the worst brunt of things, how many .gif posts are too many, who is mentally stable, etc.

Miray is overdue with our refunds per their own schedule. They insist they will repay us in full, but I wonder where this money is; they’ve had what I would consider significant expenses. They did try to purchase a ship and are on record saying they paid a multi-million dollar deposit that they lost (which is what makes me believe that this whole thing wasn’t a malicious scam, but rather a not-so-funny-when-its-happening-to-you comedy of errors). They purchased materials to refurbish said ship, so they need to pay those vendors. Anybody need several hundred custom-sized recycled ocean plastic mattresses? They paid for staff, PR firms and ad placements. What about the rampant inflation in Turkey? Perhaps the interest on the remainder will grow fast enough over three months to make us whole? I haven’t done the math and I doubt they have either.

Those of us who paid with credit cards are submitting disputes while we still can. Some of us have filed with the Attorney General in Florida. Miray maintains that they are trying. I believe they want to do the things they say; they are just woefully inept dreamers. But their inability to execute on pretty much anything is like watching someone swim through honey in a nightmare.

Which brings me to another lesson: putting blind faith in anyone who promises incredible things can be dangerous. I see it all too often. We need to apply more critical thinking. We need to remove the rose-colored glasses and be willing to ask, “What could go wrong here?”. We need more scenario planning more often, thoroughly preparing for the worst. You’ll be a smash hit at the next party!

In our case, before we decided to join we considered:

Q: What if this is a scam? What if they take our money and run?

• We won’t pay in full for a tiny discount to hedge against theft.

• We make sure that we can afford to lose this money and determine our risk tolerance.

• We pay with a credit card to have an extra layer of insurance.

Q: What if we sail late?

• We need to find a hospitable relative with a comfortable arrangement.

• We travel on our own to kill time.

Q: What if we don’t sail at all?

• We need to decide where we would live next and research that area to make sure we like it and understand the situation and requirements there.

  • Would we rent or buy?

    • What would we buy?

In addition to the considerable amount of work we did to plan for actually sailing, we made damn sure we also had a back-up plan or two at every stage of possible failure. Doing this takes a lot of additional mental energy. It takes skepticism. It takes creative, dark scenario planning. And it takes cooperation from your travel partner if you have one. But planning up front saves you from the pressures of confronting issues for the first time under duress when that long-shot, shitty scenario pops up. Hopefully it never shows, but if it does, you’ll already know what to do and that will fast-track your success.

I’m not just talking about a silly cruise. It could be retirement planning. It could be a real estate deal. It could be a job opportunity. It could be a marriage proposal. “He’s hot. I do!” It could be defending democracy. How could this affect me and/or others negatively? Make your list: Optimal, Good, Bad, Devastating. Lay it out there. It can be difficult but it’s worth the effort.

Our reluctant plan B was to land in sunny Florida—and here we are, Disney passes and all! We managed to find a cute house in just two days, thanks to our accomplished realtor. Our offer was accepted the same day. We closed a week early and moved in before Christmas. All this progress in only three weeks, but after being displaced since September, it still felt like it toook soooo looooong.

And with this upheaval, I feel behind schedule. Of course, there’s all the regular reintegration requirements of buying a car, getting laundry machines, assembling furniture, hanging curtains. Plus we had the holidays, so naturally I was late sending our physical holiday cards and I still haven’t sent our holiday email. (Our fans are devastated.) Before we moved, I couldn’t wait to get my very own exercise space. With my rock-solid New Year’s resolution, I knew I would immediately and constantly be in there sculpting myself into the Adonis that I am, right? Nope. I am behind schedule on my behind-toning schedule, too. Shame!

But these deadlines are self-imposed and only really affect us. We prioritize the priorities and leave the rest for another day. And that’s okay. The key is making sure you really nail the big stuff and give yourself grace with the rest.

So, several weeks behind my own schedule, I present my case in opposition of blind faith decisions. I think they are especially dangerous in our current, largely “buyer beware” society. There are illegal and fully-legal scams everywhere. It’s a minefield out there. But we are so busy these days! Who has time to sit and think anymore? Certainly nobody has time to do any more. Hopefully someone else has selflessly thought this all through, right?

Those who have studied American history recognize the term laissez-faire and know that this practice has festered in our country before. And in the past, the federal government has stepped in to provide protections for its citizens.

But in many ways those protections are eroding before our very eyes. Special interests, huge corporations, billionaires, politicians and even Supreme Court justices are becoming making themselves impervious to accountability. Us citizens, sorry, “consumers” are left to our own devices to distinguish truth from fiction. So more and more, the sunkissed, buffed up sales pitch that sounds like a no-brainer is too often just a greasy tan-in-a-can scheme veiling a pale, anemic work product or even worse, corruption. (“Hey Siri, add self-tanner to the shopping list.” I’ll definitely start exercising next week…)

Applying critical thinking can be useful, say, when you consider who you’ll promote at work. Do you choose the kiss-ass who is always casually chatting in the breakroom and telling you how great you are? Or do you look for the unsung hero who silently goes above and beyond? A great showman typically isn’t also an incredible worker or leader. An excellent producer rarely feels comfortable bragging. Few people have the time nor the talent to do both exceptionally well.

Applying critical thinking is also especially helpful when you consider who you’ll vote for in November. The “R” or “D” listed beside a name isn’t a reliable guide for a wise decision-maker. Name recognition isn’t, either. An entertainer typically isn’t also an outstanding policy expert. (Okay, Obama. But he’s an outlier. And I’m not saying never.) An excellent leader rarely feels comfortable cheating, slandering or threatening their fellow citizens with violence. Few politicians have the time nor the talent to perform both for the cameras and their constituents.

So, please, let’s all start thinking about the pros and the cons of big decisions ahead of time more often. What’s important to you? Do your research. Scenario plan. Which do you prefer? What are you going to do?

There is such a thing as too little too late, especially when your decisions and actions affect others.

Mike and me simultaneously in Italy and Orlando at Epcot = /

It was not a sudden occurrence; they were planning to buy a ship for this voyage and the sale fell through. As the days and weeks passed and there was no purchase announcement, it became increasingly apparent that we weren’t going. While we remained hopeful, we also started brainstorming back-up arrangements in parallel.

Perhaps I’ll write a post with more details about what went down from our perspective, but this time I’m keeping it short and sweet because we are busy reassembling our lives on land as quickly as possible. We’ve been living out of our suitcases since late September, so the prospect of having more than one pair of jeans to wear on any given day is downright thrilling!

The plan is to get a house that is comfortable and easy to maintain both for when we have guests and for when we travel. We have family in the Orlando area who have been kind enough to let us occupy their fabulous guest room while we get our lives back together. We are in the process of buying a house nearby, getting a car, finding movers to get us out of storage, etc.

We are also deciding what to do to with this blog’s content moving forward because we realize our menu listed gourmet worldwide adventure and now we’re serving suburban central Florida—a classic bait and switch. We have a few ideas. More on that to come…

We are certainly disappointed that we aren’t going. It was an exciting concept! But we always knew that it was a risk. Bold new ideas don’t often launch perfectly on the first try. So please don’t feel too sorry for us; perhaps plan to come visit or travel with us instead!

Reunited early with the stuff in our storage unit

The process of packing up your life and leaving everyone you know for three years to sail around the world includes saying goodbye to people that you love and that you have become accustomed to seeing with some interval of regularity—sometimes frequently and sometimes infrequently. Saying goodbye properly was important to both Mike and me. We created a fairly comprehensive farewell plan, which had us traveling to different cities and spanned several months. We wanted to address as many people as possible in person.

Whenever we depart from our beloved family and friends, there’s usually some hope or pretense that we’ll see each other again soon, perhaps even sooner than planned or has happened historically. Three years is a LONG time to not see anyone you know in your life. Saying goodbye in this case is especially difficult because there’s almost no chance of seeing each other any time sooner; it’ll likely be longer.

We hugged people tightly, in many cases choked back some tears, and in all cases gave and received pep talks and monologues of affection. It was sad but also lovely.

Some options remained: we invited people to join us on the boat, shared the itinerary so people could perhaps meet us along the way, made some plans to reunite back on the west coast when we dock there, and promised to stay in touch. But in most cases we knew it is unlikely people will be able to make all that possible, whether they want to or not.

And so we executed our careful farewell plan from July to September. Then in late September, we packed up our suitcases, moved out of our apartment and set our nomadic lives into motion. It started with a previously-planned, two-week trip to Italy with my parents, which happened to tuck in neatly before our big cruise departure. The ship was scheduled to leave Istanbul on November 1. Perfect!

Until it wasn’t.

While we were off enjoying Italy, Miray announced that our cruise was delayed. They had been planning to purchase a ship especially for our trip, which we always knew. The problem was (is) that it’s taking them much longer than expected to complete the transaction. The departure date was changed to November 11 and the port was moved to Amsterdam. A week later, it changed again to November 30, port TBD, and remains that way now until further notice.

Life can be unpredictable. At this point, we, all the other passengers, and (all?) of the Miray employees really have no idea whether we are even going on this cruise. Communication from Miray has been infrequent and vague. More than one month behind schedule and counting, the vessel sale is neither complete nor certain. Once/if it is, they’ll still need to paint it, rename it and make repairs to it before we can begin. The longer we have to wait, the more questions and complications arise.

What we can control is how we choose to respond to the choppy waters we face in life. Is this whole situation a blessing or a curse? Despite the discomfort of real overhaul and uncertainty, we did receive the absolute gift of sincerely telling our people how much we love them. And, after all, no one ever really knows when we’ll see anyone again.

That said, almost immediately after all that anticipated absence, all the gushing and agonizing about being underway a world away, sailing off in our cabin for years, we’ll instead remain, underfoot, only a wall away, snoring loudly in their guest rooms—indefinitely.

I suppose that title was right all along…

Mike and I are not “cruise people.” Certainly I am not. We’ve been on a few over the years: a vegan cruise, a Disney cruise, a Bahamas cruise. And I admit we did have fun. But those trips were mostly initiated by other people — because we are not cruise people. Maybe Mike is a little bit. But not me. I won’t bore you with the details but I have my reasons.

That said, we are travelers. Mike is a happy, adventurous guy who has been to far more places than I have (note his considerable head start paired with cushy international consulting gigs) but we’ve both been fortunate to visit many different countries and we’re both eager to continue. In fact, our life plan a few years ago was to retire early and then travel. Miraculously, we retired early. Step one, check. Yay! And then… the pandemic. Our schedules all cleared up and nowhere to go. Whant. Whant.

Homebound, we swapped Santa Monica for suburbia to spread out, renovate and enjoy a house — with a yard! It was definitely a shithole fixer. We moved in and renovated and mowed and renovated and weeded and renovated and rented a jackhammer at one point and renovated and went to Costco on our special days out. We marveled at all of the available space in the parking lots of stores. We composted and got solar panels and traded our electric compact car for an electric SUV. We ate at home mostly. We became suburb people.

We already knew that I am not a cruise person. We were finding out that Mike is not a suburb-during-a-pandemic person. Truthfully I wasn’t either, but the whole thing got to him faster, and just as the world was beginning to reopen. So what next? We had never dreamed any of this would happen. What could we dream up?

The only logical option was to take a post-pandemic dive headlong into the germiest location possible, which also happened to be the most exciting: New York City.

We sold the now-gorgeous house, packed whatever would fit into a hypothetical one-bedroom apartment and drove across our great nation to rest our heads in the city that never sleeps.

Shortly into our Manhattan sojourn, my husband achieved peak-Mikeness. He bounced more when he walked. He smiled wide on the subway. He’d confidently declare that any inconvenience was easy to endure whenever it was raining or freezing outside, which felt often.

Although I was slower to thaw, I, too, was appreciating the perks of New York over Los Angeles. New Yorkers are direct and surprisingly considerate. The grid system makes sense. It’s easy to get around. There’s a ton to see and do and eat. It’s not so self-aggrandizing. We even started to contemplate buying a place. Things were shaping up!

In May, with Central Park finally blooming, Mike received an Instagram ad: “Experience a brand-new way to travel and see the world!” We suspected it was a scam, but it piqued our interest nonetheless.

By September we were fully in. We broke our lease, sold our car, stored all of our furniture, informed our friends and family, and planned to leave bustling New York to go LIVE ON A CRUISE SHIP FOR THREE YEARS.

Did I just say that? A freaking Instagram ad? Is this real? Yep. We are going to cram ourselves into a 182 square foot cabin where we will SHARE ONE CLOSET? So we can sail? On a cruise ship. Around the world! WTF?!?

We will live on the MV Lara for 1,095 consecutive days thanks to Life at Sea Cruises. It’s the first-ever, three-year, all-inclusive world cruise from Miray. We leave Istanbul on November 1, 2023, meander way up, down and around the globe, and return to Istanbul on November 1, 2026.

We are going to experience and share so much of this precious world: all seven continents, 140 countries, ~350 ports — all from the same bed each night. And despite the pitfalls of typical cruising that I usually despise avoid, I rather expect this to be different and fabulous. Truly.

We’re both so excited that it feels surreal! It’s going to be quite an adventure. We invite you to follow along with us.