The happy place

Was in Belgium once, had this client who was an absolute prick, he would act real condescending, each morning he’d make me wait in the lobby for 20 minutes before letting me in. He smelled bad and didn’t seem to change clothes. (Fun fact that you could smell him looking over your shoulder) Another guy there smoked giant packs of cigarettes and called me weird after I ordered a sandwich with tuna and cheese off the canteen (don’t know if that’s what prompted his reaction (tuna and cheese sandwiches aren’t weird as far as I know), it might also have been the fact that actually am weird). I just said the same thing I did when my driving instructor called me feminine for not being able to tell left from right: “Thank you”. I learned that from a book, Joe Abercrombie book, not sure which one (I really like his books especially The First Law triology and The Age of madness triology and the Shattered sea triology). Something along the line of “take everything as a compliment and you can never be offended”.

Anyhow I would fly from town to town and do some stuff at some various client sites and then go sit by myself alone at some hotel or eat dinner alone at some restaurant and the tears would drip onto the Norwegian pizza and I’d read some book alone by myself. I don’t like being alone. I don’t like it at all. I don’t need to spend time talking to people, I’m more like a dog: I just like having people I like near me without necessarily interacting with them so much.

Another problem with travelling I had was that I don’t like travelling; I don’t like flying, I don’t like Hotels, and I don’t like seeing new places.

It was after seeing the 1998 movie Six days seven nights that I made up my mind to quit. Have you seen that one? About a retired pilot Harrison Ford who agrees to fly this very successful beautiful business woman Anne Heche in his beat down small plane to some important business meeting, but they crash somewhere halfway there on some small island where pirates appear and they are all stuck for Im guessing six days and seven nights. And well she is very stressed about missing the meeting until she takes a moment to stop and do some soul searching, like what if there are things more important than having a career, what if happiness is in your reach if you just slow down and look at what’s right in front of you (in her case it was Harrison Ford). It was exactly the same for me I realised from my couch (I was at home when I saw it)

One of them managers said to me that I’m making a mistake by quitting to be at home more, focusing on family, he said that he did travel a lot and that when he is at home, It’s a special occasion and everybody is very excited to see him.

I do like that but other way around today: I work from home and spend time with my family, and when I go to visit the office, everybody is very excited to see me.