Day 2 of 20 Days of Travel

Ok, I won't actually be traveling for he full 20 days. I flew to Colorado yesterday, fly home tomorrow. Fly back to CO on Monday morning. Back home on Friday. Santa Fe on Sunday. Back on Thursday. Chicago (with the family!) on July 4th/5th. Back on the 8th - don't even know what day that is. Then, my boss wants me to go to Washington DC for a week starting something like the 20th. Yeah, right.

Life is very interesting. I just read my friends blog. I would have to say that his job is 100% the same as mine, but yet he reports that he loves his job, while I, I am sad to say, don't. It makes me think about what it is about myself or about my job that is.... different.

Many of the things about our job that he lists that he likes, I like too. For example, teaching students, doing research, etc. I like doing all of those things. I seem to concentrate my thoughts on all of the things that (most likely) just fall off his shoulders. For example, meetings all of the time, mundane paperwork, letters of support, travel, and ... I have to imagine that he gets so much more joy out of the more fun bits of his job, that these don't bother him, while I, on the other hand, tend to concentrate on these aspects of my job, and make it so I want to scream.

I could imagine a therapist saying something like "When you truly love someone, and they fill you with happiness, then their flaws just don't matter at all. But, when you are not filled with happiness, then it is easy to get sucked down into thinking about the flaws of the other person all of the time." Not that I have ever heard anyone say this type of thing... just imagining is all I am doing.

I think that this is true of my job also. I need to figure out how I can fill my black heart up with love for my job, so I won't get caught up in all of the crap that I have to do. I do admit that there are aspects of my job that I absolutely love.

One of my (many) problems that I have, if you have not figured this out, is that I tend to spread myself too thin. I am like the guy in a game of Risk who thinks he can take Asia and hold it. You just can't hold Asia. And it is ok to not hold Asia. Why not settle for Australia or South America. These are nice little continents that give you some armies, but don't tax your resources. I need to accept that life would be better to just hold Australia and not Asia.

For travel, I imagine that one of the reasons that I hate travel is that I have this PERCEPTION that my family is basically miserable without me, and that it is my fault. I also am a homebody. These two things make traveling sort of miserable for me. I have to work on saying "yes, I am leaving my family, but they will be fine without me, so I might as well enjoy myself." If I don't enjoy myself, is it making their lives any better? By making myself unhappy, does it make my wife more happy? While this is true at home, where she can witness me being miserable, it doesn't work while I am out of her sight.

Ah well. That is enough for on night in a hotel in Denver.