Mist
Don't do cruises. I don't gather that you are the type of person who would like them. I mean, they're better than nothing, but they are cramped and boring (imo). Go south of the border and do an all-inclusive resort. Mexico or, Jamaica or, if I were you, Costa Rica. Costa Rica is a chill and relatively safe country that is absolutely beautiful, and it has all-inclusive resorts of very nice quality.
I advise this for several reasons:
1) It is newbie friendly. If you are not an experienced traveler and if you book an all-inclusive resort through a travel agent (Apple Vacations or the like), then they will literally hold your hand all the way. You fly there, a bus is waiting for you at the airport, you get to the hotel, they hand you a drink as you walk through the door, and then the travel agency sucks your literal cock off for the whole stay. Meanwhile, you don't have to think much about money as it has already been spent. All you have to think about is pools, beaches, walking/hiking trips, and flirting. Food and drinks are On-Demand at your beck and call. You don't even have to think about it.
2) You don't even have to think about it. I believe this is also newbie friendly. Because you aren't constantly having to micro-manage your daily itinerary, or rent a car, or buy groceries, or plan your route to the place you want to go, you can just...... max and relax. The money is already paid, all you have to do is suck in the service and the luxury.
3) You can max and relax. And that is the entire psychological benefit so many others are trying to press home to you. You cannot understand the value of stuff like this until you just do it. Once you're there and you get over the initial anxiety (I always have a little bit of travel anxiety, but I also always overcome it quickly), you will feel so much better. And when you get home? That's where the real pay-off is found, imo. When you get back to work for the first time your co-workers will look at you with new eyes, and you will look at yourself with news eyes. The whole point is to get new eyes.
As I've said to you for like what, 5 years now?, you are always welcome to come to St. Louis in the humid fuck-you heat of late summer and ride on my ambulance with me in the north-side ghetto for a few days. It might make you appreciate a lot of things you have at home in White Collar Rhode Island that you never really thought about before.
Be it the ghetto or the beach, it is the
perspective itself, the binocular vision it gives you, that is the true value.
Honestly? It doesn't even fucking matter where you go. Just
go somewhere.