The Bracket Busting, Commuter Complaining Weekly Update
Its the end of the first weekend of March Madness. My bracket is still fairly intact except for Kansas. (Rock Chalk Jayhawk was not giving me any love today!) And that’s just the beginning of the weekly update.
I’m one week down in my new position at a new firm and settling in nicely. I haven’t made a major change in quite some time in any area of my life – but since I declared 2015 to be the year of change, I’m seriously embracing it and quite happy with my decision.
One of the things that made me slightly nervous to go somewhere new was having to adapt to a new travel policy. Anyone who travels frequently for business can relate. I was happy to discover that my new firm has an extremely flexible travel policy – no major restrictions (or leanings) towards carriers or companies, a very simple reimbursement structure, and I can still book my own travel (no agency or booking site). That makes life a lot easier to not have to adjust to a new travel routine too!
The travel routine I’m still adjusting to is the commute. While I live in west Fort Worth, my office is in north Dallas. The drive would be 45 minutes with no traffic or roadway construction at an off-hour… but with both of those a given during the week, it has run me anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes. Luckily I will be able to work remotely part of the time and my travel will return to regular levels in April but I’m still figuring out how to adjust to that much time in the car on some days.
Not being able to blog as much (due to more time on the road) meant my content this week here at Jetsetter’s Homestead was down…but hopefully I’ll figure out a strategy. I’m going to try a few things – perhaps taking the train (although it’s going to require an Uber ride for the last 5 miles or so) or using voice-to-text on my phone – to see if I can gain time back.
In travel news, I had two good travel moments this week. One was that I received surprise Gold status with Marriott. (Did you?!) The other was that I managed to snag one of those $400-ish business class fares to Beijing. (And I even upgraded mine to first… a good use for my systemwide upgrades given the limited number of international trips I’ll be able to take this year in addition to the ones I’ve already booked.) I’ll be going Memorial Day weekend and I’m excited as this is my first trip to Beijing. I know that 48 hours won’t be nearly enough time to see everything, but it will be fun anyhow. And also it will put a nice dent in my Executive Platinum requalifying.
I also shared a crazy story about a guy who crowdfunded his trip to stalk his girlfriend on spring break. Crazy stuff! Other writers on Prior2Boarding had some great content this past week – be sure and check out my favorites.
This week, I’ll hopefully be back in the swing of things as I continue to adapt to my new normal!
xoxo
