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Business Trip


This week I left for my first-ever business trip. My boss for the past 9 months lives in Puerto Rico and flew me down for a week. This was my 4th time traveling by plane, my first time doing so alone, and my first time leaving the continental US. After being stuck at home for several months where every day was sort of blending together, it was nice to escape and get a change of pace, even if it was just for a week.

Personal

This week has been a week of new experiences. I do not characterize myself as particularly adventurous, I typically like having a plan and a schedule that I can follow. This past week was pretty much nothing like that. I booked a flight to Puerto Rico only 3 days before leaving and got on a plane to go stay with my boss and coworkers, only one of whom I had ever met in person. With no real plan of an itinerary, where exactly I would stay, or how long I would be staying, this was certainly out of my comfort zone. In the days leading up to the trip, I was a bit nervous but also excited. I have never really ventured out on my own, and doing so in such a grandiose fashion served to be some real immersion therapy.

I had some really awesome and amazing experiences. From trying a wide variety of delicious food, seeing beautiful views and new places, and meeting a lot of people who live a different way of life than I am used to, I was able to gain some interesting perspective. There is only so much you can learn from reading books, watching movies and TV, and reading articles. There are a number of things I took away from this experience, and the most salient would be to take a step back and analyze my life.

Coming from New Jersey, and having a lot of experience in NYC where life is fast-paced and the cost of living is very expensive and then going to a place where life is so different was very thought-provoking. I hate to generalize but I would not think it is unreasonable to say that so many of the people in Puerto Rico live with relatively less money and possessions than those in a bigger city, and yet are likely happier. It was interesting to see the contrast of the fast-paced life in the northeast compared to the slower-paced life on the island. I was able to have a lot of engaging conversations that came about naturally as I was observing this different way of life for the first time with a number of people who have lived there for years.

Books/Podcast

In the main podcast I have been listening to this past month or so I have finally caught up to 2021. I have about a dozen or so more episodes until I catch up to the present, at which point I will start to explore some other podcasts that have been recommended to me. It has been a very interesting journey and I have definitely learned a lot. This past week I was not able to read as much as I had initially hoped, but that was good in a way because I was able to experience more of my trip. The one book I was able to get through was Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. This was a very interesting book, and I was happy to finally be able to get to it. I will write more about it in the takeaways section under "Books I've Read." 

Gratitude

For this week's gratitude post I can think of a number of things for which I am grateful. There are a lot of things that I take for granted in my daily life which only become noticeable once they disappear. The most easily recognizable thing after this trip was simple infrastructure. Things like roads, highways, street signs, plumbing all were very different than what I was used to. These problems were definitely exacerbated by the fact that my boss is currently renovating a building and lives in a more mountainous part of the island where some roads are windy, steep, and riddled with potholes. I know that a small island that frequently gets hit by tropical storms must have difficulty maintaining solid infrastructure, but it is not something that I ever really considered. Coming back home and seeing how easily I have access to well-paved roads, good plumbing, wifi, and electricity makes me appreciate the little things, that if absent, are not so little.

It was a tremendous opportunity to be able to go to Puerto Rico and I was able to witness a different way of life. Hearing stories of how interconnected the towns on the island were during normal times, and how the community has supported one another even through the pandemic was very interesting. I think that tragedy has the ability to bring people together as unfortunate as that sounds. This was especially visible to me during Hurricane Sandy when my whole neighborhood was out of power with fallen trees across roads and even breaking into people's homes. Everyone came out of their houses, was walking around the neighborhood, and spoke to one another for the first time in years. Similar to last week's gratitude post, I suppose that a lot of the time, something that may seem bad on the surface may have a lot of positive effects if you take the time and look a bit deeper.



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