It's a Sunday. My watch says 8:03 pm EST. I'm on a plane, enroute to Boston. As the pilot said, we're at 35,000 feet - cruising altitude. Now the flight is turbulent. It was smooth earlier. Probably some weather system as we approach Boston. The flight attendant just announced that we have another 1:10 more to go. I'm seated in 1A, by the window. I could have taken pictures with my camera but the battery is discharged. I'll use my cellphone instead.
Today was really weird. I woke up at 4 am. I knew I couldn't go back to sleep so I went to the living room and watched TV. I was able to sleep for about an hour on the couch. At 6 pm, I changed, got my bike and rode it till Barker Cypress in Katy via the George Bush Park. It took me an hour to get there and another hour to get back to the house (about 8 to 10 miles each way). Tired? Yes.
Don't know what's going on. Probably it's because I didn't want to leave home. I've spent the past hour looking at some of the pictures that I have on my laptop. I've known all along that I've been traveling all these years. My girl is 10 years old and my boy is 8. All this time, I've been on the road. They are growing up really fast. I saw our pictures when we traveled to New York a couple of years ago. I saw pictures from our Christmas trip to Europe in 2007. I've been looking at pictures that I took when I was working in Germany, Japan and China. I also looked at pictures I took in Manila on a recent trip. Something has been bothering me. I hope this is not some sort of depression.
I probably know what's going on. I've been thinking of the possibility of getting a "normal" (i.e. local) job these past few years. There are pluses to this job that involves travel. For one, I've been earning a lot of airline and hotel miles. We've been able to travel to places, both domestic and international, for free. We've stayed in great hotels in different cities and different countries for free. On the minus side, it's mostly on the family side. I would have loved to be able to go home every night just like "normal" dads do. There's more and I could go on and on. It's not like this is the first time that I'm dealing with this issue. It's a cycle of thinking that I go through every now and then. The great thing is I can always look forward to coming home every week and see my wife and kids greeting me at the door. I still have to work on my expense reports and other admin tasks when I get home. I'm not sleeping in some strange bed in a strange city somewhere. I'm home.
