In the fall of 2014, about 6 months after I’d returned from my adventure through South America, I needed a change. Work was good, but not great. My travel itch had faded slightly, but had not disappeared. In my eyes, my career needed to progress, but up until this point my work and my travels were always mutually exclusive of each other. Work supported my ability to travel, but the two never played nice together.
By dumb luck or by some divine intervention, I stumbled across an enticing job posting while in the midst of applying for a different job that would have almost permanently reinforced the divide between work and travel. A month later I was on a plane, headed to Seattle, Washington for the week to provide consulting services I did not yet know I possessed. I went back to Seattle again the next week. And the week after that. And the week after that. A few months of Seattle weather in the winter can easily depress a Southern California beach resident, but I was invigorated by the newness of it all. Every week was a scavenger hunt to find new food, new people, new corners of the city, and new challenges at work. For the first time, I had figured out how to establish a symbiotic relationship between work and travel, and I dug it. The frequent flier miles and hotel points were just icing on the cake!
For the better part of the last year, my work (or travels, however you want to look at it) took me all over this country I’d somehow neglected during many of my previous travel jaunts. I spent the better part of the spring sampling Texas BBQ and touring Astronaut training facilities in Houston, as I got the chance to work on the next generation of American-made human space transport. The summer months brought me to sleepy Huntsville, Alabama, where a smile and hello was simply not enough to connect with some of the warmest people I’ve met. Conversations and relationships came first, and productivity was simply a byproduct. Throw in a couple trips to Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, a week in St. Louis, Missouri, and some weekend trips to New Orleans and Chicago, and you end up with quite a year of both fulfilling work and abundant travel.
After well over 100 flights, I’d touched nearly every corner of the United States, read at least a dozen books, listened to hours of podcasts, sampled all the local cuisines I could, and contributed to the development of some of the most advanced technology the world has seen to date.
Now, what to do with all those frequent flier miles...