Week 4 - Experiences

The last two weeks have been hectic. A real spiral to start a year.

First, my birthday hit on January 5th, which I dutifully took off work to have a breather after a fun, wild and busy Christmas period with family.

But work began in earnest at $job, where we transitioned to being the main organising sponsor of the Young Scientist & Technology exhibition. I've been involved in this project for a long time. Over the last 3 years I was the person sent on-stage to hand out category sponsor awards. And this year I was involved in the pitch to the board to woo them as a title sponsor. The rest, as they say, is history.

The week of the event was excellent. My main job was to guide VIP guests to the projects from children in the area of interest to the guest. All of the guests I guided were politicians of some nature. Party leaders, mayors, etc. And their interactions with the students from their constituencies were often wonderful. Not least, and selfishly, the ones where the Lord Mayor visited schools from my constituency.

Then one week later (this week, to be precise), I flew to south San Fran to experience our sales kickoff events. Luckily, we host it all in our office and stay in nearby hotels. Which meant we weren't disrupted by the 30,000-person conference downtown. But between downloading enormous amounts of new information, draining social batteries, eating horrific food and being involved in panels, discussions and Q&As, I was too downtrodden & busy to really enjoy any of it.

However, a few months ago when I booked travel, etc., I decided that the 'spare Friday' (sponsored by Aer Lingus' bizarre lack of Thursday evening direct outbound flights to Dublin) would be a downtime day. I rented a 2015 Porsche 911 (991) Carrera. I had a few hours before my flight. So, I got the Turo host guy to bring the car to my hotel, got a late checkout and prepared to go get brunch in Half Moon Bay after I find some fun roads to bring this monster around.

It was spectacular.

I've not driven a non-EV in about 2 years, when I rented some VW SUV thing on a family vacation to be the bus for everyone. But obviously, a mid-sized SUV with horrible manual gearbox and 1.2l engine is not quite the same as a 911. Luckily I've never struggled with the switch from right-hand to left-hand side driving.

It had an automatic gearbox but with flappy paddles I could use. Sports mode let the car sit at a higher rev limit and make more noise. But it's a rental. It was a little shabby. The AC was wonky. Dials and controls were loose. But the engine roared. I got used to it's little idiosyncratic nonsense quickly and simply enjoyed it.

I had my only good meal of the entire week in a little diner in Half Moon Bay. I had 2 cups of lovely coffee. And I took some snaps of my beautiful little companion car for the day.

I was joined by a colleague whom I then dropped to the airport for his trip off to Seattle; a fair trade for the specialty coffee beans he bought me. The very beans that are activating my brain to write this blog post!

Then I went back to Highway 1 to rally around a little. I went back to my hotel, grabbed my stuff, checked out and headed to a nearby hotel to grab another colleague en route to the airport. We then met a bunch of colleagues in the airport, had a beer and some nachos before hitting the plane home.

After two weeks of utter chaos and semi-abandonment of my family, this could not have been a better little day. It capped the start of the year, and beginning of normalcy for me going into next week. It also gave me pause to sit and appreciate the fact that I can and will do these sorts of things to look after my headspace. I'm infinitely better for that day.

Experiences are what drive us (pun intended). We don't have money, stock portfolios or good health for the sake of them. Convert all of that into experiences. I never buy gifts for people that are physical goods. I always buy experiences. Race track experience days, spa treatments, dinners, etc. You're only on this earth for a short while. Enjoy it, and tell others the stories of what you experienced while you're on the journey.

Week 4 - Experiences

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