This has been a time of enormous change for my husband and I: I’ve moved to White Plains and my husband will be joining me in early December, I’ve changed my job (I’m now back at my old stomping grounds at a digital agency in NY), we’ve rented out our flat in Manchester, and I’ve also made a shift in the direction of my career (slightly more abruptly than intended). Right now, most of my possessions are in a shipping container making their way from the UK to my nearly empty apartment in the US. With all of this change there was always bound to be a lot of stress, but throw in a random (and destructive) hurricane, an incredibly intense assignment at work, and a bunch of boring financial and logistical hurdles and it’s safe to safe my last month has been hardcore. The death of one of my uncles and some health problems with family members has also been weighing on my heavily.
Over the past month, I’ve been on ten flights and slept in five different beds. By the end of the month, I’ll have nearly doubled both of those figures. I am filled with a moderate amount of fear that I might be turning into an Air Warrior, living my life out of an appropriately sized carry-on bag. My travel has been pretty much evenly split between work travel and personal travel, but over the next six months it is definitely shifting towards a lot of travel for work. Luckily, although my job is pretty full-on, I really like it. Maybe most importantly, I’m working with people who I like and who are super smart. And I am feeling like I’m having a positive impact on the account I’m working on.
I’m hopeful that all of the turmoil of the past few months is going to normalize a bit in the next few weeks so I can do things like eat real food (lunch even!), get caught up on my personal and Proto-type email and see some of the friends and family that I moved back to America to see. I haven’t had much time to reflect on what this new (old?) life might mean or what I want to do to make things a bit more manageable in terms of the old work-life balance conundrum. So far, work is winning…but I’m determined not to let it remain that way.