Today my daughter and I are boarding a plane bound for an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean. We’ll spend four days enjoying white beaches, spa treatments, and VIP pampering. It’s our very first mother-daughter getaway, and we’re setting the bar high.

Oh, and it won’t cost me a dime.

The tab for this trip is being picked up by the PR company representing the resort. As a travel writer, I am invited to go on press trips like this (OK, not like this, this is definitely one of the best so far!) several times a year. I also receive free hotel rooms, admission to world-class attractions, and meals at fabulous restaurants.

I don’t get health insurance, but there’s no doubt that the benefits of my “job” are fabulous.
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Not having a boss is awesome.

Except for the part where you don’t have a boss.

By that I mean, there’s no one around to make sure I’m on task. Sure, my kids demand to eat regularly, which is a constant reminder that money must come into the household, but by the time they’re clamoring for food it’s too late to worker harder or smarter. I have to rely on my own internal motivation and self discipline like a real grown up.

This would be a heck of a lot easier were it not for the Internet.

Facebook and Twitter are just the tip of the distraction iceberg. YouTube and its plethora of music and comedy can feed my ADD for hours. My Google Reader is always full of blogs waiting to entertain and inspire. My inbox is as much a to-do list as a but don’t do it now! trap.

And now, the world has fallen in love with Pinterest.
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This is my last post for the Full Time, All the Time blog. It’s hard to believe that it has been more than two years since I started writing here, but it’s even harder to believe why I’m leaving.

Over two years ago, I took on the role of blogger here when my predecessor Karen Waldron of Chookooloonks stopped working full time in a corporate office and started building her own business from her home. My very first post here was about how I felt guilty watching Karen leave the workforce, but how certain I was that working out of the home was the best choice for me and my family. Two years later, I’m writing my last blog because I, too, have left the traditional workforce behind in exchange for self-employment.

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I know that there was a time not so long ago when the Internet didn’t exist. And then the Internet did exist, but it was a luxury. And then it came to our homes in dial-up, then cable, then… well, you see where this is going. We’ve come a long way since Al Gore invented the Internet and today we live in a world in which a great majority of our ideas, products and services are exchanged “in the cloud.”

I make my living entirely online. I don’t have an office and every product I make or service I deliver is digital. And yet, I am currently living without reliable Internet for the first time in almost 15 years.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks. My workload is nearly the same as what it was when I was living in a house with 24/7 wifi service, but I’m getting it done in three days a week instead of five or six.

Ironically, a lack of Internet has made me more productive.

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I am one week into living and working on the road. Here’s what I’ve realized:

I spend way more time working that I thought.

I set aside an hour in the morning to work and spend all of it checking email, writing exactly nothing. I tell my family I’ll work a little bit before we hop back in the car for our next destination, only to find it takes me four hours to do two hours worth of work.

Apparently I have no concept of how long a task will take me. I’m not sure how this hasn’t become an issue before now; I guess because there was no one standing by and watching my hours stretch past their original boundaries of schedule.
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This is the last post I’ll write for Full Time, All the Time from the comfort of anything resembling an office. This is probably also the last week I can reasonably claim to work “full time.”

One week from today, my family and I are moving out of our suburban home and into a 24 foot travel trailer RV. For the next year, we’ll tow that portable house all over the United States with our old SUV, working and living in cities and campgrounds that promise free or cheap WiFi. My kids are calling it The Biggest Vacation Ever, but I won’t exactly be on vacation. I’ll still be working - although hopefully less than full time - because someone has to pay for the campground fees and cereal.

Things, they are a-changin’.

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I should warn you right now, I am sick.

My stomach hurts, I have a mild but persistent headache, and I kind of hate anyone who is not sick right now.

And yet, here I am, trying to string a few letters into sentences and sentences into - what do you call a bunch of sentences again? I’m not doing it for the money, but because I have a deadline and that deadline represents a level of trust to me. Someone else is counting on me, trusting me, to do what I said I was going to do when I said I was going to do it. It’s not their fault I’m sick, right?

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I had to call my husband after he’d left for work and apologize for being such a - er - not nice person this morning.

I ended up hanging up on him about 15 minutes later.

I’ve had to apologize for my crankiness repeatedly over the last few weeks, and I wouldn’t blame my family if they were starting to doubt my sincerity. I really am sorry and I do intend to be less crabby in the future. Really.

But I’m running out of ways (and time) to relieve a boatload of excess stress right now.

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It’s not like I didn’t know January 1st was coming.

First of all, it happens every single year at the exact same time.  And if that isn’t enough (because I forget lots of things that happen at the exact same time every year), there is a massive world wide countdown to its arrival.

10… 9… 8…

What? It’s 2011?  It’s been 2011 for five days and I still haven’t taken the time to make a single resolution or goal for the New Year?

Well, crap.

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I said once that business travel sounds a lot more glamorous than it is in real life.  I lamented the early morning flights and the time away from family.  Business travel, I said, is often time spent in a hotel room rather than time spent traveling.

Tomorrow afternoon I’m getting on an airplane for a business trip. To the beach.  I received my itinerary by email and discovered that I’ll be enjoying a private tour of a nearby zoo and zip line facility.  My beach-front condo is going to be stocked with food and drink so I can enjoy breakfast in my room before heading out to spend time at a sand castle competition.

This part of my job is, to be frank, awesome.

We talk a lot about finding ways to juggle the things we have to do, spending less time doing the things we don’t want to do, and coping with the things we wish we never had to do again.

But ideally, we all have something we love about our jobs.  After all, there are lots of things we could do for the money.  Don’t we choose our work based on more than money - based on delightful perks like being sent to a beautiful beach for a weekend?

What keeps you coming back?  What makes the conference calls and the late nights and the daily juggle worth it?

What do you love about your job?