The Road Less Traveled

I've often lamented about the plight of the holiday business traveler. While I will, no doubt, be one of those travelers this winter, I did manage to avoid the crowds this year over the Thanksgiving holiday. I will also, no doubt, be catching up with all of the road warrior adventures in my other blogs and websites. This time I decided to employ a different approach to the travel game. I sent my young friend James home for the holiday - from New York to Los Angeles. With the complications of the different planes, trains, and automobiles (no relation to the movie) today, I am still working on the adjustments to his itinerary as he is in transit.

Being on this side of the computer screen is really different. Instead of just thinking about all of this and doing the scheduling, I have this strange desire to be out there as well. I've always liked being on the playing field when it came to the road warrior game. With all of the travel disruptions that I've fixed en route so far, I kind of miss the adventure in some sort of twisted way. It also probably relates to the fact that James is the closest thing I have to a little brother of my own. That overprotective tendency is starting to kick in.

All of the delayed flights, early and late trains, missed connections, and other crazy travel disruptions are an integral part of the road warrior path that I have traveled quite often. So this time, while I play scheduler behind the scenes, this road less traveled may be something nice to do when I retire. But I'm not quite ready for retirement yet, so it's time for me to schedule another twisted adventure for myself out there. Let the road warrior game continue...

See ya.

Maybe It Is A Strategy After All

Sometimes, you just have to have some faith. I know I just talked about my contingencies in my last rant, er, blog posting. It's been mentioned that faith and beliefs and hope aren't necessarily a scientifically sound way to form your strategies. In fact, as a student of sales, marketing, and the business world, I've been trained to find the answers, sometimes even before the questions can be determined.

As I indicated last time, sometimes taking a leap of faith can be the best contingency of them all. Let me qualify that remark. After years of strategy and planning, you have to eventually know that there are way too many things that are out of your control, and infinite outcomes are possible. You can plan all you want based upon the best possible data at the time, but you really can't call most things absolute. It also helps to rely upon your best instincts in many cases.

When mentoring youth, I've always mentioned that it doesn't matter if your fifteen or fifty. We're still making decisions based upon our best analysis of the situation, and having faith that we've got it right. It's not the fact that I can analyze things better than a teenager (sometimes I can't). It's just that I might have been doing this a bit longer than some people. There's something to be said for experience, too.

Ok, I'm done with the psychobabble for now. See ya.