Various Things I Write After 10pm: Wednesday Edition
I woke up at 5:15 and showered and made espresso and tea and oatmeal and got dressed in whatever order. I am pretty much able to go without a belt now which translates to: I can button my pants again. WOO HOO!
I drive to Delaware and at 7:30am my phone announces, "Welcome to Delaware." This is not something anyone should ever hear so early in the day. For the first time I have started listening to the Spotify Daily Mix options and I have to say that I actually like them. A lot of this is stuff that I already listen to but some of it is new. I also line up a podcast guest but it will be by phone. And it will only be part of the show. This will happen on Thursday. I went with the NICA theme again since this is the last race.
I get to the hospital and find my way to the lobby, and as I wait I try the espresso shop in the corner and it's actually good. I am surprised.
Work is a circus but mostly tame compared to other go-lives.
As the day progresses and it seems I will not be able to get out in time, I text D and ask her what my curfew is. She says the same time as her last night, which leaves me a lot of room for error as she got home at 11:30. I hope I'm not here that long.
After work (and I'm sorry
@JDurk, but Henry can blow me because I am riding) I hit up White Clay. As I have said before, I gladly pay the $8 ($10 actually, keep my $2) because these trails keep getting better. Again, I just ride and when I get to an intersection I pick the direction that looks the most fun. Today the trails are spot-greasy but in all, way better than most of the ones up here. I have to say I really do love this park and I wish it were closer. As I am nearly done I run across
@J-Dro (holy shit, I looked for @mtbdawgjeff, when did you change that? Did I change that?) and we talk briefly. We did try to link up for the ride but being that we had the kids tonight I had to try and get back home in a reasonable time.
After the ride I hit up Little Goat Roasting Company for a double espresso and a road coffee and then I am off. The espresso was very good. It's right around the corner from Iron Hill Brewery which is good post-race eats for those who do Iron Hill. I get home before 8:00 and manage to eat dinner with the family.
The Joy Question
"Do you ever get tired of the flying out to different places for work and spending so much time on a plane and away from your family? On the one hand, you get to see different cities and try different coffee places and ride bikes on company time and all that... But on the other hand, if you're away for two days, that's basically 48 hours you're at work. Plus I can't imagine Newark airport is any better than NJ Transit."
First I will say that the airport things don't really bother me that much. It is 100% out of my control so I let it go and deal with it. I have my "travel process" as it were, so if I am at the terminal for 3 hours or 3 minutes, it doesn't bother me too much either way. I deal with whatever life deals me. I enjoy the actual plane time much less than the terminal. I don't like being hemmed into those seats. But it is what it is. I’m also inherently untrusting of a mass of steel so far from the ground.
So on the other things you ask, I have thought about how best to answer this on & off today and I think there are a lot of ways to look at this.
In a sense I feel that what I am doing right now is a Work Hard/Play Hard lifestyle. I am doing my very best to live the F out of life these days. Within the context of the trips I go on, I think that makes obvious sense. Meaning this: If I have to go to Austin, I might as well enjoy it, right? Or like today, I am 2.9 miles from White Clay. So why not go? I don't think that is anything novel or crazy. I think a lot of people do that but I am sort of explaining the Play Hard part of the equation here.
But that also entails the Work Hard part of it, which the job demands right now. To be fair, the job doesn't necessarily demand it. It may be more fair to say that I get the most out of this job by working hard at it. I have earned my way into a position right now that allows me to have a metric shit-ton of freedom and absolutely nobody questions it, because I am really reliable, and I bust my ass at it, and make some sacrifices for it. On that note, tomorrow I am going to disappear for 3 hours to drive to Sean's and do a podcast. Nobody will question that I am gone.
But this also means that when someone is needed on-site, if it makes sense for it to be me, I'll do it. That's why I went today, because they were going live with something and my boss was going to fly out. This makes no sense, so I rolled it up into a drive-work-bike-drive trip. This earns me a TON of leeway. Likewise, the St. Louis trip is squarely on me because I ran the implementation, so I volunteered to go for that one. I will say this - I 100% do not want to go on that one because that org is a pig fuck. So for that trip, I will do my best to make the best of a moderately-blah situation. I will likely try to go biking.
Also, we get unlimited vacation with this job and if I "do the needful" as such, I think I will get less shit for taking days off when I need/want to.
Other trips it really depends. The 2 Chicago trips were a waste earlier this year. I like my boss, and he always lets me stay at his house. I enjoy the family and his kids and they always buy me great meals and he has an awesome Napresso coffee machine and I have his garage code. So it's like I am more than welcome to go there and stay (as is D, as she has spent time with them too). But those previous 2 Chicago trips ended up being a dog & pony show for the acquisition which was a bit of a waste of time. The trip next week was my doing. We need to fix some problems and I am sick of weeks going by and none of us actually getting things done. So I pushed to make it happen because it will make all of our future lives easier.
I think for me, the worst time is night time. I'm just not used to sleeping in a King bed by myself, and I dislike that aspect of it. When I'm done for the day, it's just lonely. That's why I often find a coffee shop and work, because being more productive on the flight or on the trip as a whole allows me to come back from it and fuck off more. While I'm at work during the day, I can be at home or in Minnesota. Really it makes no difference. But night time is not really that great.
But I also know that this has been a sort of rocket explosion of travel, which is mostly new for me. Will this continue? Maybe it will. And if it does, I may start to need to turn down some of these trips to keep my sanity, or insist that D come with me sometimes. On that note I can easily see this job coming to an unceremonious end any time in the next year. So while I am here I'll enjoy what it gives me, and try to maximize my Work Hard/Play Hard potential. I would also be lying if I didn't say that Career Growth did not come into play. Right now, my boss is shooting up the ladder of impact (not necessarily the corporate ladder, big difference IMO) and he is taking me with him. I'll also add that I have never enjoyed working with someone as much as him before. Having a boss/coworker that makes the job enjoyable is invaluable. I need to preserve that because I would be an idiot not to.
Finally, and I am probably deluding myself with this thought, I do hope that at some level the kids see this whole Work Hard/Play Hard thing that we have going on and get something out of it. I do think at some level they are a little envious of all the travel I've been doing. And I think they are always interested in finding out what we did on the weekends that we don't have them. I remember the first time they realized that we often go away when they're not here and D making fun of them, asking if they thought we just sat on the couch and waited for them to come back. In all reality, I think that maybe they assumed we really did that. Anyway, I hope in some small way they look up to what we do and think that there is some reward for the hard work. But I am also a realist.
Take any or all of that and put it in a blender if you want. All of this is a mix of incoherent things that I thought about during the day. I cannot turn this into anything but a mixup of sentences. So I am sure someone can take 2 things from 2 different paragraphs and point out that I am contradicting myself. Have at it, since I am sure the inner workings of my brain are often in conflict with itself. So on that note it would be fitting.
Anyway
@MissJR - I hope that made some sense. In a sense this is looking at it from a glass-half-full perspective. I don’t think it makes any sense to look at it half-empty.