Enjoy It While You Can

People say this to me a lot when I tell then about how much I travel for my job. "Enjoy it now while you still can."

I'm away a lot for work, but I also add time on to those trips to visit with family and friends in the area. Since Labor Day I've been somewhere almost every week and have been out of town every weekend for work or pleasure. I thought the rest of my year was going to be travel free but the next four weeks are already booked with trips.

One of my recent trips came through from American in my email like this, "Trip to United States of America":

Charlotte to New York to New Orleans to Cleveland to New York to Charlotte over 11 days. I came home for 4 days before leaving again for another 9 days.

I was hoping the rest of the year wouldn't include much travel, but in the last three days I planned 4 more trips, two of them include a lot of driving because flying would take so much longer and be incredibly inconvenient. That's probably not the end of the travel either.

However, back to my point. The phrase, "enjoy this while you can." Of course, I've thought it too. The travel is great, I love it - but if I had a family I wouldn't work like this. I've thought that for a long time, that I wouldn't work when I got married and started a family. But I'm half way through my 31st year, and I know that's not old, that my life isn't over yet, etc... All of the things I know you're thinking that you want to say to me and that I have even said to myself.

This weekend I spent it with my family in Texas for my godmother's 50th Wedding Anniversary. It was a fantastic celebration filled with tons of family time, which was long overdue. I love visiting my family in Texas and could seriously move there to be closer to them. I loved being at the party, but I couldn't help but think I'll never have a party like this. I'll never be married for 50 years. 

I know that it is technically still possible, if I get married and live into my 80s - not a lot of evidence that either of those two things are going to happen. My family doesn't live into their 80s and marriage isn't anywhere close to my horizon right now. Maybe that's my doing, maybe it isn't - I'm not really sure anymore.

Going back to the beginning, the "enjoy it while you can" stuff people keep telling me. I wonder if people just don't know what to say about my singleness. Maybe they also want to travel but can't because their husbands wouldn't like it or they need to be home with their kiddos. 

For me, I'm going to just "enjoy it" because it's my life, and it might be my life forever. Maybe I'll spend the next 50 years being away more than I'm here because that's the life that I've been given. And maybe I'll look back at this post in a year and think "what did you know?"