The very nature of my job is one that requires me to regularly travel both within Australia and internationally. To be honest, this was initially what really drew me to the role. I love love love travelling (well really, who doesn’t?) and I’ve been incredibly fortunate to travel all over the world. To say I have the travel bug is definitely an understatement, so the idea of being able to see more of the world and have someone else pay for it, is my kinda awesome.
Generally speaking, I’m required to travel to Asia (mostly to Singapore) a couple of times a year and interstate (to either Adelaide, Canberra or Brisbane) every second month. It was great in the beginning, but after a while travelling to the same old places all the time starts to wear a bit thin (and really I don’t have to travel that much). To make matter worse, I was getting called to Singapore at the drop of a hat for fly in fly out meetings. I would literally spend more time in transit than I did on the floor.
As annoying and exhausting as it was, for the most part I accepted it as just being part of my job, and really there are other people that would kill for the opportunity to travel, so who am I to complain? That was until I had a child. Before children, it was relatively easy to reorganise my schedule (although I didn’t think it was easy at the time), so if I had to travel at short notice, I’d be annoyed, but I’d change a few things around and a couple of days later I was off. It’s just not that easy anymore. I can’t just up an leave, I have a fully dependant little person to think about.
