Confessions of a Road Warrior…
The plane shook and that woke me up. My watch says it’s 3:00 AM. I realize that time here is meaningless. My flight will cross six time zones before I land. It’s hard to sleep. That rack of goat au gratin they served at dinner is churning in my stomach. I’ve seen all the movies on the flights this month and it’s only the tenth. It’s been a tough trip.
Maybe it’s time to slow down. Over the years, I have developed a check list to tell me when it’s time to cut back on the travel. I know it’s time to slow down when…
1. I find three kinds of money in my pocket and none of it is for the country I’m visiting,
2. People start asking me if I’m from Australia or Norway,
3. I have three full, frequent buyers cards for waffles in Brussels,
4. I can say “Where’s the restroom?” in five languages,
5. I know the best restaurants in Boeblingen for Swabian food,
6. I add several hotel concierges to my Christmas card list,
7. My “good” pen is from the Shangri La hotel in Hong Kong,
8. My family publishes a children’s book called, “Where’s Charlie?”
9. My Pastor at Church thinks I’m a visitor,
10. I get a personal birthday card from the president of World Wide Airlines,
Some people call me a “Road Warrior”. There are a lot of us out there…traveling to distant places, meeting with different people, making deals, eating exotic foods, and then traveling on to another place. We’ve learned to pack for two weeks in one carry-on bag. We travel with laptops, mobile phones, scanners, MP3’s, headphones, DVD’s (in case there’s no English stations on the TV), cameras, and passports. We create a little bit of home everywhere we go and we can stay in contact with home or office from nearly any part of the planet.
Friends think it’s exciting to visit those places and to experience all that “adventure”. The truth is, that we don’t get to see that much. We’re on business so we see a lot of offices, conference rooms, and taxis. Nothing very exciting in those. We work long days, go back to the hotel, have dinner – often room service, and try to fall asleep in a different time zone.
Yet occasionally there is a weekend between work weeks. It’s a chance to do those things our friends think we do….see the Great Wall, haggle in the orient’s marketplaces, tour Westminster Abbey, worship in St Paul’s, or sail on the Bosporus. Yes, those are exciting! They help with all the long flights, lonely nights, and exhausting days. They don’t make up for being away from family and friends.
We Road Warriors complain about missing home and the weariness of our life on the road. Don’t you buy it! We’re not warriors, we’re travel junkies. Deep down we love it! We do what we do by choice. It’s hard for us to admit, but we do have a choice – we can say “No”.
Work–Life Balance is about balancing our life with our work. Did you ever notice that it’s Work before Life? Whatever the order, it boils down to our personal choices. We are the results of the choices we’ve made. Of course, it’s more comforting to blame something or someone. We feel, “I had no choice.” It means we don’t have to take accountability for our life.
So, fellow road warriors, and those who feel trapped in the work, make choices and own your choice. Living out your choices shows what’s important to you…your personal vision. Here are a few questions to help you get clear about your choices…
What really is important to me in my life?
What choices have I made that contradict what’s important to me?
What have I said “Yes” to doing that I really didn’t want to do?
What do I plan to do change when I make future choices?
By choice, from a plane somewhere over the Pacific, until the next time…
Charlie