Work Trips for Mommy



Hello Goodbye Boston! Whirlwind-less-than-24-hour trip to give a talk. (Sorry to my Boston-area peeps; *literally* no time to get to see you in the itinerary I was working with.)

Here’s an example of something that is two contrasting things rolled into one: work trips for mommy. Work trips totally stress me out and totally rejuvenate me at the exact same time. It isn’t more one than the other. It is depletion and fuel up. It is not either-or. It is equally both at once.

Here, as always, I speak only for myself. I know, from talking with other working mothers, how different our experiences of work trips can be. And it’s important to remember that I am someone who purposely limits (and because of my particular occupation, am able to self-determine my own limitations) the number of — and length of — the work trips I take each year. I need to attend a couple of conferences each year, and I will do a few other events or speaking engagements each year. But all in all, I travel for work maybe a half dozen times each calendar year (give or take, depending on the goings on of the given year). And when I travel for work, I am traveling alone.

This Boston trip was to give a specific talk (I have a sort of niche lecture circuit I’m on, where I speak to elite independent school communities about social class inequality), and I will only say yes to 2-3 (max) of these invitations per year — regardless of if or how that self-prescribed limitation puts caps on my own career trajectory. I could do a lot more of these, but I don’t. For better and for worse. And I’m so fortunate to be able to make that decision for myself.

Anyone who’s ever been a mom can imagine (or knows firsthand) what a stressor work trips are. Making sure everything is set up and all set on the home front– before departure– is enough, alone, to make a mom feel like the entire endeavor of travel-for-work is just plain not worth it. Then there is the actual leaving, and what I’ll miss being gone. Leaving my bambinos gives me the lump-in-the-throat every single time, and I truly miss what I miss. Then there comes the re-entry… Which, sometimes, is the hardest of all — it’s sometimes crazy-hard to come back in to the diaper-changing (man, how I remember those hard work-trip-re-entry days), the food-cooking, the bathroom-cleaning, the dog-walking, the grocery-list-making, the weekend-planning, the homework-doing… After having been so free of all of the ‘second-shift’ Home Work.

It is exhilarating to be away from that Work of Home, to be unbound from the second shift, to be able to indulge in the focusing-on-only-one-job. Being a mom, and having a career, are two full time jobs. Having either of these jobs is hard work, but on a work trip having only one job (the career job) is an easy-breezy-beautiful thing when you’ve been grinding the dual-work-life. There is nothing more luxurious than a hotel room, alone, to make you remember just how completely insane your ‘real life’ really is. It is relaxing, rejuvenating, reinvigorating to be traveling alone, living for a little bit completely independent of the demands of raising children and managing a household and making a family life. It is so nice to get a break from cooking dinner and folding laundry and running the kids-and-home show.

Marriott Hotel Room, Occupancy: 1

Let’s not forget: what I’m talking about here is work trips — not to be confused with actual vacations. I am not drinking piña coladas under a beach umbrella on these trips. I’m actually working (and, just to be clear: it isn’t easy for me to walk alone into an unknown place and speak in front of an audience of complete strangers who may, or may not, receive my lecture favorably– I’m not that much of an extrovert! this is hard work for me!). And, I’m working while traveling too. I’m not packing my choice of pleasure-reading for these trips, I’m revising my talk and keeping up with email and grading papers on these trips.

Grading Papers In Flight

But there is something really unique, at least for me, about the Working Mother Work Trip. Because I’m not on vacation, I am unconstrained from even the hidden burdens that are often tied to pleasure-travel. I don’t have my kids with me (which I almost always do while on vacation), or even my husband; I’m packing for one, choosing where and when and what to eat for solely me, going to bed and getting up according only to my own schedule, and I’m free from being “in charge” of anyone but myself.

Legal Sea Foods, Terminal B, Boston Logan Airport, Lunch for 1

I also don’t have the pressure of making sure the trip is awesome… I better give a dang good lecture (to warrant the trip and the honorarium), but if nothing else is great, that’s just fine. Because it’s just me, not our precious family time, not the ‘chance to make memories for our children,’ not a ‘trip of a lifetime!’ It’s just a work trip. And that’s a great relief. 

Most of all, it is a joy and a pleasure to sit, alone, guilt-free, to drink a cup of coffee in peace — despite how bustling and crowded and stale-aired the airport (or hotel lobby, or coffee shop) may be. For this working mama, an unrushed cup of coffee (on someone else’s tab, no less), is enough to fuel me for the next few steps of this crazy-chaotic-completely-insanely-fast-paced journey that I’m on. 



Coffee and Phone Charging, Philadelphia Airport

Signing off now. I’ve gotta catch a flight.