Three weeks have passed at my latest placement, and for the next two I will be without my lovely girlfriend; for the first time alone in a very long time.
Sometimes I stop to think, if time was speeding up, how will I know? It’s impossible to stand aside and observe it; but I really feel like my life is just sweeping in and out, uncontrollably accelerating. Like a table cloth pulled out from under a laid out table, will everything remaining unchanged, or will I manage to break a few cups and saucers along the way?
Last week I was invited to go to the World Travel Market, one of the largest travel conventions in Europe. It was a spectacle of Globalisation and cultures blending into one another. In two days I did a tour of our planet, continent by continent; cuisine, booze and freebies were just part of the fun. I also attended two presentations, both in response to an industry-wide consensus that ‘social media’, ‘SEO’ and ‘mobile’ are no longer just buzz words. They are the new source of competitive advantage that will pay dividends to the early movers, and leave those that wait too long ruing their decision to do so.
I cam home to an empty house, and have spent the whole weekend out and about. A bar crawl, night in a wonderful city centre hotel (as part of my Expotel FAM trip – more about this in my next blog post), a poker night, shopping, dinner at a friends place… I somehow tried to avoid being home all weekend. Despite my efforts, here I am on a Sunday night, blogging in the most wonderful silence I have experience in a long while. Despite my initial aversion to being alone, I now think the next two weeks will be a great opportunity to think about my dissertation, get back into an exercise routine and work my ass off on both work and personal projects.
Personal development seems to always be, unfortunately, that one thing we only do if we have the spare time for it: