Traveling the World: The Other Side of the Story

I have had a lot of questions and comments lately about my travels.  It seems that many people live vicariously through me, and I love that.  I am very fortunate to have the opportunity to explore this great big world of ours and that is something that is not lost on me.  I travel quite a bit on my own, using my personal time off of work, but a lot of my globetrotting is actually for work.  

But you see, here’s the thing.  Traveling the world is no cake walk.  The parts of my travel adventures that I show you on Instagram and Facebook?  Those are the glamorous parts.  Those are the good parts that I choose to share with you.  Those are the three days of my trip out of fourteen where I actually get to explore whatever city/country I happen to be visiting.  This blog post shares another side of the story.  One that most of you don’t realize is there and would never choose.  These are my true travel stories.  The other side of the story.

Jet lag

Yeah, yeah cry me a river Lisa.  Everyone deals with jet lag, right?  Yes.  It’s a consequence of traveling across multiple time zones.  Jet lag is real and it impacts everyone in some way or another.  But it affects everyone differently.  Some people hardly have any symptoms and others are completely debilitated by it.  I’m somewhere in between.  I’m a great sleeper at home.  In fact, I like to call myself a “rock star sleeper”.  I generally fall asleep in about 2 minutes and stay that way until my alarm goes off in the morning.  I don’t take that for granted.  Now put me on the other side of the world and I quickly lose my rock star sleeper status. I want to fall asleep at 3:00 in the afternoon and when it’s time to go to bed at 11:00 at night, I’m bright eyed and bushy tailed.  No matter how much I travel, this really doesn’t change.  I have learned some tricks over the years to help me fall asleep and most importantly, stay that way, but it’s not the same as getting a solid night of natural sleep (see the end of this post for my jet lag-fighting tricks).  Here is the real difficulty:  when I am on vacation, I can choose to take a 2 hour nap in the middle of the afternoon if I want to.  I CAN’T DO THAT ON A WORK TRIP.  So what ends up happening?  I’m dying of legitimate exhaustion mid-afternoon the first few days in the office, I drink way more coffee than usual in order to offset said exhaustion, and as a result, my body is even more out of whack than before.  But it’s a necessity people.  Hello, jet lag.

Constipation
Yes, I just said constipation.  The constipation problem is real people.  When I have traveled on an airplane for 15 hours or more and land in a country that is many time zones different than my own, it takes a real toll on my body.  On any body, actually.  In addition to the jet lag that I talked about above, the constipation is REAL.  I’m tired, my body clock is off, I’m eating at weird times of the day and on top of that, I’m not eating the types of food to which my body is accustomed.  So, not only am I tired, but I’m sluggish, bloated, my pants are tight, and I would give anything (even pay good money) to have a good poop in the morning.  It’s gotten a little better over the years, but it’s always at least 3-4 days before my digestive system begins to adjust.  I won’t tell you my record for the number of days that I’ve gone without pooping (because that would be going overboard - as if this entire paragraph isn't), but suffice it to say that there is nothing glamorous about traveler’s constipation. You won’t see me posting about that on Instagram.

Travel companions
People who know me well know that I’m an introvert.  That may surprise some others of you out there.  I like being around my people.  I’m only truly comfortable around my people.  I would often prefer to be by myself than to spend significant amounts of time with people I don’t know.  Well, let me clear something up for you.  I SPEND TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER COUNTRY WITH PEOPLE WHOM I DON’T CHOOSE TO SPEND TIME WITH.  Do you see what I’m saying here?  It’s one thing to spend time with people whom I love and actually choose to travel with.  It’s another thing to spend an average of 12+ hours a day for fourteen days with random coworkers.  We are all assigned and we go where we are told to go.  I eat breakfast with them, walk to work with them, sit in a conference room all day with them, eat lunch with them, go back to the hotel with them, often eat dinner with them, and spend at least a portion of my weekend with them.  As an introvert, it’s sometimes a complete stretch on my ability to function as a respectful and polite human being.  I do pretty well for about a week and then I kind of slowly start to disintegrate into a maybe not-so-nice version of myself who doesn’t want to be around people anymore.  And it’s not just me – it’s the entire team.  Personalities clash.  Nerves are worn and frayed.  We are tired and longing for the comforts of our own people.  I’m not saying that my coworkers are bad people – they are actually quite wonderful.  I get along amazingly well with some of them.  It’s just another factor that adds to the complexities of working overseas.

An overworked brain
By now you {hopefully} understand that I’m jet lagged, constipated, and hanging out with a bunch of people whom I may or may not actually get along with.  Now here’s the fun part.  I get to go to work!  Yay!  And sit in meetings.  And read a lot on the computer.  And sit through more meetings.  And talk to a lot of different people.  And often times, I’m dealing with a foreign language and depending upon a translator to help me read.  And y’all, at the end of each day, it takes everything in me not to just crawl into bed at 7pm.  My brain hurts.  My eyes hurt.  I’m tired.  And I just want to do nothing.  And sometimes I do that.  But if I were to do that all the time, I would miss many of the benefits of being in another country.  I would miss seeing the culture, experiencing the food, walking around new neighborhoods, mastering public transit systems, visiting landmarks, and just being in the country to which I’ve come.  I don’t take my job for granted at all and I truly appreciate it.  I have had some amazing opportunities and I have embraced each one of them.  I am thankful for the chance to see the world.  But goodness is it hard sometimes.

The transition home
One of the reasons that I enjoy traveling so much, and why I have continued to do it, is that I always look forward to coming home.  Yes I’m talking about my physical home, but also about Houston, my family, my friends, and the normalcy that comes with a routine.  In a perfect world, I would come home and just jump back into my routine.  I would go exercise at Orangetheory and it would be like I wasn’t even gone.  I would go to the grocery store and stock up the house with food for the next week.  I would show up to church on Sunday morning feeling ecstatic to be back with my church family.  I would have lunch and dinner plans with friends and family.  And my clothes would still fit.  But the reality is this.  I DO go to Orangetheory, but I feel like someone is going to have to scrape me up off the floor after an hour.  I have overeaten and not regularly exercised for two weeks.  It’s a shock to my system.  I don’t have the energy to go grocery shopping, even though it’s one of my favorite things to do.  It’s so much easier to just pick up food to go for the first couple of days.  This is no help to my routine.  I make it to church, and am ecstatic to see my church family, but it’s a tired kind of ecstatic.  People are so excited to hear about my trip and I’m barely functioning and walking around in a bit of a zombie-like trance (hello jet lag).  Lunch and dinner plans sound great in theory, but after spending two weeks nonstop with people, I just want to be alone.  I really don’t want to talk to anyone for a couple of days after I return home.  And maybe the most depressing of all is that my clothes rarely fit the way they did before I left.  The transition back home is not easy folks, but I’ve gotten better about setting my expectations.  I used to think that I could land at 2:00 in the afternoon and meet friends for dinner that night.  Now I realize that is completely unreasonable for me and I don’t even try.  I extend myself a little grace to do what I need to do to recover for a couple of days, then I give myself a swift kick in the rear and tell myself to get it together.

So there you have it.  The other side of the story.  I’m curious if any of it was surprising to you or if you struggle with some of the same things.  I love traveling the world.  I love experiencing different cultures by being immersed in them for two weeks.  And I think that it has made me a better person.  But, it’s not always easy.  There are always two sides to every story.  There are a few additional thoughts that I want to share with you.  Maybe some examples of what I have learned and experienced in each of these struggles.

Those nights and early morning where I have not been able to sleep because of jet lag?  I’ve had some of the sweetest moments with God during those times.  And I’ve read a lot of books.

Dealing with constipation?  I’ve learned more about how my body operates and am better about being kinder and gentler to it when I travel overseas.

Working with people who are not my own?  I've grown so much as a person because of this.  It's helped me see more that life is not all about me.  I'm more patient, more inquisitive of people, and I like to hear life stories.  I also know when it's time to have a night on my own to recharge so that I can face the next day.

My overworked brain?  It reminds me how thankful I am that I have a job and the opportunity to use my brain.  I’ve been exposed to a lot of foreign languages and have learned a lot about different business cultures.

Transitioning home?  I am more thankful than ever that I have a loving home to come back to.  Traveling makes me appreciate home so much more.

I don’t want to end this post without sharing some of my tips and tricks for dealing with jet lag.  I hope these are helpful and of interest to you if you are a globetrotter.  Happy traveling!

Tips and tricks

Here are my tried and true tips for fighting jet lag:  Melatonin gummies.  I only started using these this year and they are a game changer.  I previously took Advil PM, but these gummies are all natural, I don’t feel hazy in the morning, and they work!  I also feel comfortable taking these on the airplane on the night flight across the pond.  No looking at the clock.  If I wake up in the middle of the night, I refuse to let myself look at the clock.  Why?  If I know what time it is, I get stressed out about “only having xx more hours to sleep” or I start thinking about what time it is back home and my mind fully wakes up.  Don’t look at the clock.  Take a sip of water, go to the bathroom, and climb right back into bed.  Trust me.  No phone.  Whatever you do, if you wake up in the middle of the night DON’T LOOK AT YOUR PHONE!!!  This is jet lag’s best friend.  As soon as I look at my phone, my mind wakes up and gets involved with what’s going on in the news, Facebook, Instagram, the Astros, weather, whatever.  And when the mind is awake, no matter how tired the body is, sleep is hard to grab a hold of.  Besides, how many times do you climb into bed at night and before you know it, you’ve been scrolling on social media for an hour?  Don’t look at your phone. It’s so hard to follow this one because when we are bored and restless, phones are the perfect distraction.  Water.  Drink it.  Lots of it.  Go to a convenience store and make sure there is plenty in your room.  Try not to overeat.  This one is hard for me because I love trying the local food and typically eat a lot more than I do at home.  But I also feel full and bloated and bleh after a big meal.  Try to eat normal amounts of food.

 
P.S.  This is my first blog post in almost two years.  We are going to have to change that.