Pros and Cons of Work Travel

Any of you ladies out there have to travel for work? 

I haven't been traveling as much lately but there definitely was a time where I was traveling at least one a month for work.  It doesn't sound like much but one you have to do it for a few months its nothing short of annoying. My first work trip was to New York 2 years ago and it was absolutely  amazing.  Everything about it was pretty perfect minus the fact that I was working about 13 hour days. After having two trips back to back and 4 trips in the last 2 months I'm feeling like I'm due for this post.

Let's start with the Pros.

{Pros}

1. You get to travel about the country on someone else's dollar. As much as I dislike traveling for work at times, I have been able to visit a lot of great places because of it. And I've learned to plan my trips so that I can see some local sites each time I travel making it worthwhile. So far I've been to New York, Minneapolis, Seattle, Spokane, Portland, Wilmington North Carolina, Austin, Dallas, Laredo, Irvine and Salt Lake City. 

2. You rack up a ton of mileage and hotel points that you get to use for personal use. 

I've bought at least 3 free flights this year and this is my current balance woop woop!

3.  If you are going to a cool city you can plan your meeting for a Friday or a Monday and make a weekend out of it. I've been able to take Scott and my friend Carla on separate trips to Seattle. Scott and I were also able to celebrate my birthday in Portland this year too.

4. You get to drive a bunch of different cars. I try to pick a different rental car everywhere I go. It's like a 2 day test drive and I enjoy that a lot!

5. Staying in nice hotels. My travel team does a great job of always putting me up it nice hotels. And as I said earlier it's all about the points so I typically stay at Marriott's and Hyatt hotels. One of the best hotels was probably my hotel in New York, in the heart of Times Square. I would have never been able to afford that on my own, so another thing to be thankful for.

{Cons}

1. The traveling itself. I'm not shy about the fact that I don't love flying, but I deal with it. On top of that you have to deal with delays (the 2 1/2 hour one I had home from Seattle last night...not happy), security lines, eating in airports, etc. A lot of that isn't very fun at all.

2. Sometimes you end up working a lot more than you would sitting at your desk.

3. Obligation dinners. I don't mind eating by myself at all, I'm totally used to it. When I was in Seattle I had a great meal at a hip sushi spot downtown and it was perfect.

Other times you need to mingle with clients. I'll be honest I've had some fun experiences and some that I just shouldn't mention here. This trip to the dueling piano bar was a "work" dinner, turned bar hop...it was fun for a bit and then I was outta there the second things got dicey. It's unfortunate that some people can't behave themselves.

I have to say that I'd like these trips a whole lot more if I could remove the flying aspect. For some reason my anxiety was raging yesterday after I found out about the delay and it was hard to get myself back together.

All and all I'm totally thankful of all the places I've been able to visit and all the fun sites I've seen because of my job. It is a pretty good gig and if I've gotta do it I might as well enjoy it right?