The Hard-Working People (by Giang Hoang)

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drinks and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.

For nearly two years, I paused my travels to hunker down at home, building Kat Studio during a pivotal transformation. My philosophy on work has always circled three keywords: outwork, mass, volume. Business isn’t my natural strength, so I trade in sweat, sleep, and weekends. I’ve always believed that if you don’t know something, you must do it repeatedly until you do; if you want to be right, you must find your mistakes quickly enough to pivot.

But I became trapped in a state of relentless thought. I was thinking about work every moment, in every place. I solved problems in my dreams and woke up feeling as though I hadn’t slept at all. I gained weight despite a varied workout routine and eating only twice a day. Worse still, my Herculean efforts seemed to yield only the smallest of results.

In the middle of September, I dropped everything and flew to Greenland. A month and a half—that was the grace period I allowed myself to turn my gaze elsewhere, to breathe air untainted by exhaust, to hear the cry of wild birds, to smell the frost, and taste the salt of the boundless sea.

I boarded a sailing vessel named Tecla just as she docked in Nuuk.

As is my habit, I arrived with an empty head. No prior research, no itinerary. I wanted to see the world with eyes free of prejudice or narrow expectations. Tecla was cinematic—flecked with the rust-colored stains of time, her ivory sails patched and bundled against the hull. She had two vertical masts and a broken bowsprit lashed to her side; wheels, chains, anchors, pulleys, and parts I couldn’t name; a black dinghy tucked neatly on deck. Since 1915, for over a century, Tecla has endured countless voyages across the globe, from the Arctic Ocean to the far reaches of Antarctica, from the last frontier of Alaska to the radiant warmth of the Pacific. Who knows what she has witnessed, or how many merciless storms she has weathered in the abyss. On that day, I became a tiny fragment of her hundred-year memory, journeying from the dreamlike fjords of Western Greenland to the violent North Atlantic, eventually reaching the haunting, haughty shores of Iceland.

This isn’t a retelling of my voyage—one that was three parts joy and seven parts seasickness. The most precious thing I gathered was the encounter with Tecla’s four crew members. These people reshaped my lost soul in a very short time. I want to tell you about them.

The quote from C.S. Lewis’s The Weight of Glory at the start acted like a gentle hand tapping me awake while I was delirious with work-frenzy. It forced me to ask: What do I really want from all this hard work? Fortunately, when you truly desire to know, the answer often stands right in front of you.

Captain Gijs is Dutch, though not quite as towering as his countrymen. His face carries only two states: deep, somber contemplation, and a split second later, a devious grin over a joke born in his mischievous mind. He opened with a welcome speech delivered with the awkwardness of an introvert. I remember only one sentence: I hope what we do here will somehow inspire you… Perhaps my soul was starving for inspiration after years of self-imprisonment in labor. Sometimes you just need the inspiration to feel truly alive again amidst the vast, primitive wilderness.

Gijs has a longtime partner he calls “wife” and two small children back in the Netherlands. A life spent roaming tens of thousands of miles on Tecla doesn’t allow him much time at home. Can you imagine that life? I bet we have been given too many comforts—or perhaps we chose this path—so a life like Gijs’s “frights” us. We fear everything: losing jobs, running out of money, being away from family, betrayal, hunger, cold, rejection.

I watched Gijs move with agile, resourceful precision. His feet remained steady even when the ship tilted 45 degrees against the swells. He helmed the boat from midnight to 6 AM, then again from noon to 6 PM, alone through wind and rain (as my group, who signed up to help, lay incapacitated by seasickness for a week across the North Atlantic). Beyond his watch, the captain is responsible for a hundred things. Gijs sleeps shallowly; a single unusual sound sends him springing onto the deck. He cleans, instructs on sail handling, drives the dinghy for fjord hikes, and acts as the mechanic when needed. Passing the galley, he’d grab a biscuit or chocolate and vanish.

Despite being “always on,” I’d catch him at night patiently explaining “micro-management” to the younger crew, Jasmine and Daniel. I smiled at his “clunky hardships.” Jack of all trades, master of none, he said of himself while tinkering in the engine room. I saw myself in him—buried under a mountain of tasks—but I fell short of his ability to stay loose, his jokes in the face of misfortune, and the way he was absolutely serious about his own lack of seriousness.

I wondered why he chose this life.

That question returned as I observed Anna, the Italian chef of Ukrainian descent. Gijs once described the submerged part of an iceberg as being two meters tall—”the height of Anna”—in his trademark snarky tone. Anna gave as good as she got. Once, while a friend and I watched the sunset, an iceberg struck the hull. As Gijs leaned over the side, eyes glued to the ice to ensure no damage, Anna “brilliantly” pressed a tiny speaker to our ears, blasted the Titanic theme, and doubled over laughing.

The galley was Anna’s domain—about 2.5 square meters. Just enough for her to stand. If someone came in to empty the trash, she had to step out. Yet, she never repeated a meal, her ingredients and tools packed with surgical precision. Anna once showed me her arms, covered in burn scars. When Tecla crosses the ocean with unforgiving waves, the galley becomes a literal washing machine, tossing Anna, soup, oil, and knives into a chaotic tumble. Yet, Anna has done this for twenty years, her loud, unmistakable laughter ringing out through every conversation.

Anna taught me to relax and accept the “suffering” of seasickness as part of the trip—not to resist or fear it, but to welcome it. I saw her laugh most when the sails were full and we glided over restless waves. That is the beauty of a sailing ship: a unique silence composed of the wind thrumming against canvas and the water lapping the hull—sometimes a giggle, sometimes a roar like clashing metal. Whenever whales appeared, Anna would rush to the deck. She showed me videos of whales in Antarctica swimming right under Tecla. Her eyes glowed. She had been there a dozen times and still wanted to go back.

Picturing Anna battling knives and hot soup in that “washing machine” for ten hours a day, for decades, while remaining so radiant, I realized my “outwork, mass, volume” mantra lacked one vital piece: enjoying the labor as “part of the trip.”

Initially, I was shocked to learn the crew was only three people (plus one for ocean crossings). My staff joked, Sinbad had five! But after meeting Jasmine and Daniel, I understood that huge tasks don’t require crowds; they require a great leader and a few high-quality souls.

Jasmine, only 23, already had eight years of sailing experience. Her youthful, innocent face in a sailing suit contrasted with her decisive movements as she dropped anchor or assisted Gijs. She was incredibly cool. She baked fresh bread for us every night; she turned leftover oatmeal into “legendary” blueberry muffins. When I finally reached Iceland, I had to run back to the boat to grab a few more before Tecla set sail for England. Jasmine was the pure, bright joy of the aging vessel—a version of Gen Z I hadn’t encountered in modern society.

Daniel joined us a week later—a young Spaniard with a mane of tumbling curls. He was a blend of wild, handsome, and gentle. His idea of an ideal vacation? Being left on a deserted island to survive on his own. He was so “hot” that when we stopped at a hot spring in an Icelandic fjord, everyone stared, even though he lacked the polish of an Instagram model. A waitress flirted with him openly, and he didn’t even notice; his soul belonged only to the wild sea and primitive truths. Daniel traveled the world not for photos, but for the satisfaction of that raw love. During hikes, he’d take the dinghy to explore hidden corners like a curious child. Yet, when working, he obeyed the captain instantly. After helming for 12 hours during a grueling crossing, the first thing he did upon docking was scrub the boat and reorganize the chaos left by the storm. He never looked tired; his face stayed bright, his hair dancing in the wind.

I was losing my way when I boarded that ship. I didn’t find my path immediately, but I found peace with being lost. I followed Anna’s lead: I treated it as part of my journey. Even Gijs had his pressures. He stressed over leading “small Asians” across the ocean for the first time; he hated counting money; he felt the anxiety of the next group of guests arriving. Our final conversation, as I grabbed those last muffins, ended with him saying: For now, I’m just enjoying the day.

Perhaps we are all lost in our own ways. Gijs told me about being in a city supermarket, buying things for his kids, and suddenly standing still amidst the crowd, basket in hand, feeling like he didn’t belong. He is made of a more primal love. He gets emotional every time he says goodbye to a group. When I no longer feel sad to see people leave, or happy to see them arrive, he said, that’s when I’ll quit. That convinced me: “outwork, mass, volume” without enjoying the process—without love for what we do, even when it’s wrong or failing—only leads us further from our core.

I titled this The Hard-working People because we often treat diligent workers as a separate species, something to be admired from afar, as if hard work must be a joyless struggle. I hope this makes you “normalize” hard work and hardship. The crew of Tecla showed me that this is how we truly cherish life—by living it fully and roundedly amidst a sea of unsatisfying things.

So, perhaps we should ask: Do we want to continue running blindly after money, sex, and entertainment as the final destination? Or do we want to open our eyes wide and witness our own lives, every minute as beautiful as it truly is?

(pictures from the blog https://jess-thai.com/2025/10/13/the-hard-working-people/)