Monday, March 4, 2013

I Feel Weird

Probably a combo of too much caffeine on top of jetlag. Just got back from a five-day trip to Florida for a family wedding. First time I’ve flown since I stopped working. I used to travel every three weeks or so. Got used to it. Sort of.  Sounds more glamorous than it is. That cosmopolitan feeling wears off after about six months (although I never got tired of cool hotels in the center of hip DC neighborhoods I never could have afforded to live in).
Traveling for pleasure is a lot more … uuhhm ... pleasurable. No stress worrying about  whether your package of training materials arrived  or whether you will get in on time to get the room set up for the early morning meeting. No need to check the smartphone to keep up with emails.  It’s easier to go with the flow and just let it happen. And I was traveling with my mom who uses a wheelchair at airports because of the walking distances. What a gig.  Long security line? No problem. Go directly to the head of the line. Priority seating? Yep. First on. Royal treatment. All for a few dollars in tips. I’m surprised people don’t take advantage of this. (You didn’t hear that from me.)
And there is also the post-trip “let down” (not that I am not glad to be home). A weekend of events and socializing with family - functioning in groups - is immersive.  The tide just floats you from one thing to the next.  
I’m the oldest of 15 cousins. Quite a few of them, and their children (my second cousins – yes, I looked it up) most of them in their twenties, plus a couple little ones, were there – along with my Aunts. We don’t get together much as we are scattered across the country. It was really good to spend time and to catch up on the trivial and the important. Yet not enough time one-on-one to really dive in.  Just enough to make me wish we were closer geographically. That little bittersweet taste lingers longer when not facing an onslaught of work-related things to deal with.
What is the same though, is the first-day-home feeling. It was the equivalent of 2 o’clock in the morning when we got to my house, so I still have that time-warped-weird-sleep-fuzzy brain that used to be all too familiar. Throw in no real exercise for five days and lots of eating, and you have quite the travel hangover. When I was working, I’d just go to work and stumble through. But with nothing distracting me now, I can really feel it.
Finally, this trip made real just what I got myself into with traveling to Nepal in April: four times the travel hours that this was. Yikes. I might need to adopt the work -travel mode for that trip: don’t think about it - just do it. And make sure to have spare batteries for the noise-cancelling headphones.

P.S. It's a day later and I can still feel it. Weird.


1 comment:

  1. I'm feeling the post-trip "let down" today, too! It was so hard to go back to work after such a FUN weekend!! It was so great to see everyone...I wish we all lived closer.

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