Friday, November 4, 2011

Today's fortune: November 4, 2011

Today's fortune: You will travel far and wide, both pleasure and business.
I've done a good amount of pleasure travel in my life - family road trips every year, a wonderful honeymoon with my wife, and other small trips since we've been married - but my experience as a business traveler is much more limited.

Not non-existent, though. When I was an intern in Washington, D.C. about 10 years ago (a business trip itself, you could say), I was assigned to attend a conference in Columbus, Ohio. My flight from D.C. to Columbus was the first time I ever flew on an airplane (I had ridden to Washington by train).

Years later, I attended a journalism conference in Reno, Nevada, which turned into pleasure when I focused more on the poker tables than the boring conference. After that I flew to Chicago for a conference with editors from the newspapers in the conglomerate that owned my newspaper. I had a lot of fun there, too - Jamie flew out to meet me, and we spent a couple days with my old friend Alfonso. Ironically, that trip, which should have been a huge step forward for me professionally, was the beginning of the end of my journalism career. Less than a year later the newspaper was shut down and I was out of a job.

But that's depressing. I want to talk about a potential business trip that could mean much more for the career I am in now as a widget maker.

If I find myself on a supervisor's career path, the two-week training program takes place in Los Angeles.

That's a dream for the future, though. Right now I want to get really good at the job I'm in now. And I'm perfectly content for now if the only business trips I take are the ones from my house to the office each day.

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