The Life of a Traveler

Travel isn't always easy, but I love what I do!

It’s been 9 days since I was able to sit in front of a computer. 9 days. I still have a piece on St. Moritz to finish, a high school commencement speech I’m calling, “A Series of Fortunate Events”. It took me weeks to finish the last blog I wrote about how I don’t want anybody to call me an inspiration, and school is starting soon. I can’t seem to sit still! But, a big part of my life is out on the road now, and I have to roll with what comes my way.

It’s Spring now, so even if I weren’t traveling, there would be weddings, soccer games to go to for my son, swim meets for my daughter. But Crossfit and all of the nonprofit work I do has got me jumpin’. A couple of weeks ago, we went to Virginia Beach for a Crossfit seminar. In the last six weeks, I’ve been to San Jose, Philadelphia, Charlottesville, and Greenville, SC. In the next month, I’ll be in Virginia Beach, Israel (yeah, the country), California, and Texas. There will be lots of trips to New Jersey and New York for the Yellow Ribbon Fund.  Then there was the Frederick Celtic Festival, the Vet Sports Gala in DC was last weekend (I won athlete of the year! How’d that happen!)…

I AM NOT COMPLAINING. I love my life, I love what I’m doing. 

I need a nap. And a cup of coffee. At the same time, because I don’t have time to do one or the other.

Just to be clear, this is not a glamorous, lucrative life. There’s a big misconception that I get paid to do these seminars. I don’t. I am not rolling in it. It is actually pretty expensive for me to take all these trips and I’m not swimming in money. I was making a hell of a lot more money as a hardware engineer for a government contractor. I could take my wife to dinner and drop $300 without thinking about it. That’s not the life I live now. We work our asses off to provide for our families, but our driving force is to affect major change in the lives of others. The reward is so much more valuable to me than expensive dinners.

This is the life of a traveler. I didn’t know this was the life I was going to wind up with, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. My wife would disagree, but she loves that I’m happy.