On the repetitiveness Kirk talks about in the beginning of the movie:
As someone who’s been on a deployment on a ship, I couldn’t have empathized with him more. I’m sure every sailor can agree with me; it becomes monotonous. Water and space all kinda looks the same after a while, and although I still gazed out over the water at least once every day and went “wow, this is beautiful” I also spent a lot of my time awake doing the same thing I did yesterday and the day before and the day before that.
The intensity of the monotony is stronger when you’re stuck on a ship with walls you literally can’t escape. If you’re on shore, you could always take a car and drive off somewhere. You can’t do that on a boat. And you know you’re stuck. Sometimes that’s really heavy, sometimes it’s actually a blessing because you don’t have to worry about anything other than your job.
From talking to hubby, it’s similar to being in a warzone too. Lots of monotony punctuated by brief moments of terror. He spent most of both his army deployments mostly sitting on base, and it’s it a lot of staring at the walls, so to speak. And he did a navy deployment too. There’s a reason why Navy ships stop off and give everyone a break now and again, and there’s a reason why the Army sends you home for two weeks after so long overseas.