One question that's come up a couple of times while talking to recruiters and such is about relocating. "To where would you be willing to relocate?" the question usually goes.
The answer is both simple and complex. I'm a city boy; I like big towns. And, by "big towns", I should point out that I live in the second highest populated metropolitan area in the nation and have lived here all my life. I mean, Los Angeles metro has more people than most states. I've travelled to smaller towns for business, obviously, and even vacation in such places, but I tend to end up feeling cramped or restricted in places even up to 500k or so. So, I'd prefer a larger city somewhere.
Ironically, I'm probably more willing to move to someplace like New York City than to, say San Francisco - I'd rather make a bigger jump than a smaller one, if we're talking about changing cities. I mean, I'm all for moving actually *into* LA Metro (I'm a half-hour north of the city), but if I'm Leaving Los Angeles (to steal from Sharyl), I'd rather it be a major departure. I'm also open to leaving the country, depending on the circumstances.
(Random note: it's November and over 90 degrees today. We've had some really freaky weather this year.)
A position where I'd be a kind of travelling consultant would work as well. I had such an opportunity in the late 90's that I would have taken had the first position not been to South Africa - one where I would have been restricted to the bank where I'd have worked and the hotel I would have stayed at, with a multi-man armed escort between the two buildings. Not exactly a "safe" environment. In general, though, I love travelling and seeing new locations, so a roving consultant position would be great.
I know a lot of people are terrified of the idea of travelling or moving. This is probably one situation where my peculiar biology comes into play: I honestly think I have some kind of neural discrepancy where I don't feel "at home" anywhere, probably related to always feeling like an outsider. The advantage is that, if nowhere is specifically "home", then you're equally comfortable in any environment. That's pretty much the case: I can check into a hotel and instantly be comfortable. I can also fall asleep anywhere if I want to - planes, trains, cars, any bed, etc. - and don't usually suffer from jet lag. Even airports don't piss me off the way they seem to annoy most folks.
If anyone's still actually reading this blog - how do you guys feel about work travel, either permament or transient?
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1 comments:
Hi there, Austin
Yes, I am still reading this, though I'm afraid not commenting as often as I would like (but see my latest post about that).
To give a worthwhile answer to your question, I probably ought to address some of your other points first.
"Home": I think I have a stronger sense of home than you do, and Cambridge seems to be it - I've lived here almost all my adult life, and it's somewhere that I'm familiar and comfortable with. It's big enough to have all the facilities that I want, and small enough that I can easily get out to the country. As a university town, there's plenty going on, and if I want a dose of big city life, London is only 50 miles (80 km) away (45 minutes by train) - close enough for a reasonable evening out.
All that said, a lot of my social activity these days is on the Net (hi there, blog-land!) and I could probably uproot myself without much pain.
Travelling: I do this a lot for pleasure, as you've probably noticed by now; I enjoy visiting new places, as well as returning to familiar ones. I seem to be able to become comfortable with somewhere new (at least as a tourist destination) within a couple of days - all it seems to take is one or two nights' stay, a few hours wandering around, and preferably a meal or two.
But that's leisure travel; I think work travel may be a somewhat different kettle of fish for me. I haven't in fact had to do any work travel for five or six years; before that it was usually day trips to customers. The few occasions that required a stay in a hotel felt like something of an imposition, but then I tended to end up in out of town hotels with little opportunity to explore or socialise. These days, I'd probably be a lot happier, as long as there was decent internet access (!).
As for a permanent move for work, I'm not sure. As indicated above, I could probably leave Cambridge relatively easily now - but I think I'd struggle to find anywhere else I like quite as much.
On the subject of Cambridge, if the travel bug happens to take you across the Atlantic at some point, you'd be very welcome to drop in here and stay a while - I'm always happy to have an excuse to show someone around, and it's not a bad centre for exploring southeastern England either.
Take care
Mark
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