I haven’t been to the airport in months. This wouldn’t seem like such a strange thing except for the last five years, I was a very frequent traveler. And 90% of it was for work. Many of my colleagues and friends would make comments like, “That’s so cool you get to travel,” or “Must be nice to get out of the office.”

But the reality is that it was not glamorous at all and rarely fun. I was able to go to some great places and sometimes extend my trip. I often traveled with some lovely ladies, and we always seemed to find great food and shopping. However, much of the time, I traveled alone, worked 12 hour days and ate a lot of room service.

In these five years of traveling, I worked for two different companies. The travel was different for each. For one company, the travel was directly related to site visits, client meetings or prospect pitches. The second company, the travel was directly related to trade shows.

I can say I’ve been to a lot of cities across the country, but often I saw very little except for boardrooms, convention centers, hotels and airports. This is what I learned from five years of constant travel:

It’s really hard on you physically. I’m no spring chicken anymore. And constantly dragging around heavy equipment and doing physical labor like setting up booths just adds to the toil that flying puts on your body. After over 20 weeks on the road last year, I was physically and emotionally drained. I didn’t have a great support system at my company that understood all the things I was doing so if my flight got in at midnight, I still had to be at the office at 8AM the next day.

The days are so long. Whether it’s the time spent at the airport, which often had me arriving before 5AM or the long hours on the trade show floor, the days are unbelievably long. And of course when I finished my time on the floor or meetings with clients, it was back to the hotel to work several hours catching up on all the other stuff I needed to do.

I should have explored more. Maybe, I shouldn’t have spent all that time working in the hotel. It certainly didn’t get me anywhere. I did certainly do more exploring in cities that I was interested in doing so. I had great fun in Austin, Denver, San Antonio, Dallas, Boston, DC, Portland and Chicago. I went to places that I would have never gone otherwise like Des Moines, Lexington, KY, Indianapolis, Lincoln, NE, Sioux Falls, SD and many other less touristy spots. I do really love to travel and explore what makes a city unique. But it’s often too hard to get motivated to see the city when you’ve been on your feet for 10 hours.

Air rage is a real thing. I don’t really have fits of road rage. I’m a pretty patient driver. I’m a less patient passenger. I would often say, “How did this people make it out of their house?” when looking at the other passengers around me who seemed to still be surprised that you can’t have liquids and need an ID. Not only was I surrounded by incompetence, I was often in the midst of simply bad behavior. Do people need to be reminded that they’re in public while at the airport? Apparently so. The things I have seen in airports and on airplanes is astounding: shoes off, clothes half on, people half in your seat, people falling asleep on strangers, children kicking chairs and throwing things, water pouring down on my head from the A/C unit…my list could go on and on. Most of the time I kept it under control, but occasionally, I could no longer bite my lip. One time, I was on a flight coming home from I don’t know where. I was toward the back of the plane, but I always waited my turn to disembark. That’s how it works. We file out in order. But so many times, people would rush up from the back and push people out of the way. So on this day, a young lady was trying the same thing. There were some elderly people on the other side of my aisle. I got up pushed my arm back so that the lady couldn’t pass us, and let the other people out. I simply said to her, “Let’s learn some manners today.” Honestly, that’s what being a good passenger is about – being polite and cognizant of other’s personal space. I’m still shocked by some of the behavior I witnessed, but I have no doubt those people act like that everywhere, not just the airport. I just don’t believe the world revolves around me. Being at the airport will convince you that many don’t share that sentiment.

Spending too much time on the road made me depressed. I’m someone that has been dealing with depression since my early teens. It is a disease I deal with on a daily basis; some days are better than others. But being on the road and away from the man and pups I love really got me blue last year. There were multiple times when I broke down in tears in the airport or on the airplane. I am not a public crier. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with crying; I’d just rather do it privately. Whether it was how tired I was or how much I just wanted to be home, spending that much of my time away made things feel unstable. And when I feel like my life is unstable, the depression gets worse. It’s very isolating to be a traveler, especially when you are on your own, as I was much of the time. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m an introvert so I’m not going to make friends with the person sitting beside me (or on me) on the plane. I’m just not someone who strikes up conversations with strangers. I always had my nose in a book and that was a great escape. However, at the end of the day, it can be very lonely.

These are just a few things I learned. Hope you weren’t expecting travel tips; although I have plenty of those. I’ve been to at least half of the airports in the U.S. I know who flies where and how tricks to get cheap tickets. I just wanted to share the reality of constant travel and how it impacted me and my life.

For the immediate future, the only travel I see for me in 2016 is purely for pleasure, including another trip to Jamaica in December!

And just to give you some perspective, here’s a list of all the places I visited in the last five years for work; many of them more than once:

• Austin, TX
• San Diego, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Portland, OR
• Phoenix, AZ
• Denver, CO
• Breckenridge, CO
• Indianapolis, IN
• Lexington, KY
• Louisville, KY
• Chicago, IL
• Sioux Falls, SD
• Orlando, FL
• Dallas, TX
• San Antonio, TX
• Houston, TX
• Des Moines, IA
• Fort Dodge, IA
• Minneapolis, MN
• Lincoln, NE
• Nashville, TN
• Virginia Beach, VA
• Norfolk, VA
• D.C.
• Baltimore, MD
• Philadelphia, PA
• Columbus, OH
• Long Island, NY
• Boston, MA
• Myrtle Beach, SC
• Savannah, GA
• Atlanta, GA
• St. Simons Island, GA
• Montgomery, AL
• Birmingham, AL
• Wichita, KS
• Connecticut and New Hampshire (can’t remember exactly where)
• McAllen, TX
• Atlantic City, NJ
• Memphis, TN

That’s all I can remember off the top of my head! To all those still traveling regularly, be safe and stay kind.