lucabrasi999's Journal: Some time off from being a road warrior

For just over seven years, I have been doing the same thing almost every Monday morning. I'd get up very early, get dressed, go to the airport and catch a plane to somewhere else. The following Thursday evening, I would return home. Now, sometimes, the flight out may have occurred on a Sunday night, or the return flight may have happened on a Friday (once in a while, I had to stay over at a client site for an entire weekend), but, for the most part, I've been away from home for three nights and four days every week.

For the first couple of years, I would say I traveled about 70% of the time. Then, as the dot-coms crashed, my work level exploded. I've been on the road pretty much 48 weeks out of the year for the past five years. The other four weeks were either vacations or short breaks between assignmentst. Even though the travel has been tough, I hit a stroke of luck in that I was able to avoid the layoffs that hit my company. My group went from over 400 consultants to just over 50, but I kept working (since that time, we have increased our numbers through a merger).

Now, just as I was becoming sick of travel -- I now have a 20 month old son at home, as some of my other journals have indicated -- I hit another stroke of huge luck. My company won a very large project in my hometown. At first, the contract is right in my ERP skillset. In addition, they want an architect to help design the hardware side of things on a three-to-five year project. My company has decided to train me on the hardware side of things!

I will help out on the ERP side for a few months, but then my company will train me to be the lead architect. It is a bit overwhelming, since I am more of an applications person, but it sould be interesting and fun.

I will be working at home. Commuting by car! Of course, my wife and I presently only have one car (why pay for two when I am away every week?). So, I have to buy a vehicle, but that is nothing compared to spending every night in my own bed!

I am keeping my fingers crossed. I want to do well as the architect and keep working from home for a while. Of course, I also want to use this working from home thing as an excuse to buy a Harley-Davidson...Since I'll see my wife and kid every day now, I won't feel guilty about taking a few hours off every month to ride.