I’ll never forget my first business trip. I was right out of college and working for McKinsey, this big consulting company in New York City. Our team’s client was a company with a division in France and there came a point during the project when one of us had to go and interview some of their employees. Since I speak some French (it was much better 10 years ago, unfortunately) our manager chose me to go.

I was in a rush getting to the airport and didn’t read my itinerary careful. So you can imagine my 24-year old surprise when I got on the plane and they ushered me into the business class section. WHOA! My seat was bigger than my apartment at the time. And the flight attendant wanted to know what I wanted to drink and she took my coat to hang it up and offered me a menu to choose from for dinner which looked like a menu from a fancy New York restaurant.

I knew I should get some sleep on the flight but I couldn’t calm my excitement for a second so I just ate a lot of food, drank a lot of wine, watched a few movies and just overall felt completely awesome being there. When I got to my ultra-plush hotel in Paris I realized that the luxury was going to continue and I was determined to eat it up. I was in Paris! In a fancy hotel! Flying business class! For free!

Of course, if you’ve traveled for work, you know where this story is headed. My trip was all meetings and meetings and not very much luxury. Sure, I slept in an amazing bed bigger than any I’d seen before, but I was so exhausted every night collapsing into it that I almost didn’t notice. Thankfully I’d been to Paris before because the only Paris I saw then was out of a window of a cab that I took between the hotel and the client’s office.
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We were visiting friends in New York City this past weekend (where I was basically in tears over how much I miss living there, but that’s for an entirely different post) and went into a kids’ book store. Our daughters are the same age, five, and of course after running around for a bit they came asking if they could get stuff. One was carrying a book, the other a science experiment kit.

Our friends were standing off to the side talking to my husband so I ended up being the one who was asked. My first instinct was to say no. I generally think that giving into my daughter’s every whimsy is a bad idea and just because we go into the store doesn’t mean we’re going to buy something there. On the flip side, we were there for a short visit, the girls were behaving really well (despite being dragged around doing adult stuff most of the weekend), and the things they wanted to get were reasonably priced and items I would consider great — a good book and a fun, interesting science kit.

I told the girls to go play some more and that I’d talk to the other girl’s mom and see what we decide. They didn’t whine and left to check out more books — which I think pushed me over the edge towards deciding that it was actually a good occasion to get them each a small gift. But it did get me thinking about the recession and whether it was affecting the amount of things we were getting for our daughter or the amount of stuff she was asking for.
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I just watched this video over at Jezebel where the self-help author Marcus Buckingham shares his ideas about how professional women can be happier and succeed in their careers. (You might have seen his writings over at the Huffington Post, where he pontificates on this topic quite a bit.)

One of his basic points — which the blog post at Jezebel also points out — is that working women need to juggle less, outsource more, and learn how to focus on the moment vs always having several tracks running in their heads. (As in, making a shopping list during a work meeting.) At first look, it makes a lot of sense. A lot of my stress comes from the fact that I have too many things I feel I need to do on a daily basis — from getting work done to buying my daughter’s winter coat, organizing my dad’s 60th birthday party, sending a birthday gift to a friend’s newly born son, cooking dinner for the week, and so on. If had less things to juggle I would absolutely positively be less stressed and probably happier.

But here’s the deal: While it would be great to have an assistant do a bunch of these things for me, how many of us can really afford that kind of help? When we lived in New York City and I worked at an insane finance job, we had an amazing full-time nanny. In addition to taking care of our kiddo, she also frequently cooked dinner and cleaned up around the house, although we never asked her to do it. It was an enormous help and a huge, huge stress reducer, but we paid a lot of money for that kind of help and we couldn’t do this for more than a few years. Even more so, I realize how lucky we are to have the jobs that we have and know that a significant percentage of families out there simply can’t afford this kind of help.
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Oh, yes, this post is about the frequently-discussed but not-enough-practiced topic of some “me” time. I’ll come right out and admit that I am one of the worst when it comes to the lots of talk but not a lot of doing category: I talk (and write) a lot about how it’s really important to take some time just for myself but I do it a lot less than I should.

It used to be that I felt so much working mom guilt that I literally would not leave my daughter’s side if she was awake. I’ve since replaced my mommy guilt with some separation anxiety, but it’s still a pretty pathetic reason for why, say, I don’t spend more time with my friends or catch a movie on my own on those nights when we can’t get a sitter.

My next popular excuse for not taking time for myself is that I have too much to do. When my daughter is sleeping - as she is right now, during her nap (yes, we’re lucky, she still takes a weekend nap) - run to catch up on work or cook or clean something or organize something or write a blog post or do something else on my ever-long to-do list. Am I pretty sure that reading a few chapters from a book or checking out my latest copy of In Style while nibbling on some dark chocolate would be really really really good for me right about now? Yes, but the to-dos call my name louder than my “me” time.
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I had worked from home for two years before starting my most recent job last spring. As we’ve talked about here, there are lots of pros and cons to that arrangement, but I was fairly certain that not having to commute to work was a big pro. No traffic frustrations, more productive time to get work done, never having to worry that I would be late getting home and relieving the babysitter on time.

But I have a discovery to share, after now commuting to work for the past six months: A commute can be a very good thing. In fact, I am going to go ahead and say that I love my commute. And here’s why:
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When I lived in New York and worked in finance the question of whether or not to dress up for work wasn’t a question: Yes, looking business sharp was a must. I still have a full collection of suits — well, to be honest, I hate suits, so I only have three — blazers (now those I love), shirts and numerous black pants hanging in my closet from those days. The company where I worked didn’t require us to be fully decked out in suits but you wouldn’t see jeans or t-shirts in the office unless it was the middle of the summer and the bosses were definitely out golfing networking.

Since those days we moved to Boston — a much more casual city, I find — and I now work for a software company where the office uniform is jeans with a t-shirt. (For some reason our group, myself included, are also into funky sneakers, which make our workplace uniform even more relaxed andunformal ). For the first few months after I started this job I was happy to work in such a casual environment. Getting dressed for work required a lot less planning and effort than what I was used to and I was really comfortable during the day.
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After you read what I am about to write, you’re going to think I am either very silly, very stupid, or … something worse, so I won’t give you ideas:

I was away for most of this week on a business trip. Since I am horrible at sleeping on planes and in hotel rooms and since this trip involved a three-hour time difference, I got very little sleep, even less than my usual miserable amount. On top of this, the trip involved some extra celebrating sessions with my team, which — as you might guess — brought with them some alcoholic beverages. When I landed on Thursday after a sleepless five-hour red-eye flight, I felt like I’d been punched all over. I went home, slept for three hours, and got right back up to take my daughter to our work Halloween party.

That night I slept like a baby but I woke up on Friday feeling not much better than before. I went to bed later than I should have — c’mon, I had to have at least one real conversation with my husband after a week of short text messages and “gotta run!” calls. On Saturday morning, I was still exhausted. But… (and now we get to the point of this longish story)
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