back on land three days and someone asked if i wanted to "grab coffee" and i stood there like they'd offered me a concept i'd only read about. coffee is real. grabbing it is real. the casualness is what's hard. offshore you say what you mean. onshore people say "let's circle back" and mean nothing. i'm not angry. i'm just slow to translate again.
Two Weeks Offshore and the Language You Forget
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Two Weeks Offshore and the Language You Forget
I have been back on land for three days. Someone asked if I wanted to grab coffee, and for a moment it felt like they had offered me an abstraction I had only read about.
Coffee is real. Meeting for it is real. The casualness is what is hard.
Offshore, you say what you mean because ambiguity costs money and sometimes lives. Onshore, people say let's circle back and mean nothing, and everyone nods as though the sentence were a plan.
I am not angry about this. I am slow. Re-entry is always translation work: converting the direct language of the rig into the padded language of offices and polite invitations. It takes a few days before I stop hearing everything as code.
The North Sea does not teach you to hate land. It teaches you to notice how much land runs on performance.
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