The things I miss with business travel…

Although business travel allows me to see many more things than I most likely would have seen otherwise, there are plenty of events that I miss.

When I was reading my local newspaper, the Charlotte Observer, I realized Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was auditioning in Charlotte today and where was I?  Syracuse, Philadelphia, and now Annapolis!

That is what frustrates me the most about travel.  There are often things back home that I would like to attend but I can’t because if I excused myself for everything I wanted to I’d never be on the road.  There are shows that I can see with friends during the week, movie screenings for free, Yelp events, birthday parties, the list goes on and on.  My friends know my stock answer when they invite me to anything is “I’m out of town.”  Eventually they just stop asking.  I have to make sure I send out a blast to them “HEY I’M IN TOWN, INVITE ME.”

I doubt I’d be in my prime for Who Wants to be a Millionaire since I’m never home for trivia night and since I hate waiting I’d never be chosen for the show, but maybe next time Jeopardy is in town I’ll try.

Some things I can do on the road as well, but for the most part I’m constantly in motion when I’m on the road so it’s hard to catch a movie in theatres when I’m flying and it’s hard to visit museums when they close at 5 pm and I’m in meetings until 4:30.  It was also easier to plan that when I traveled solo for the first 5 years since I had complete control…but I was alone.  Now I always travel in a group so I have less control over when I come and go, but at least I don’t have to eat dinner alone!

There are great aspects to travel, I’ve been to 45/50 states, I’ve been to over 11 different countries using my miles from travel, I’ve met a lot of great contacts in my industry, but I’ve also missed the birthday parties for many friends this year.