Am I the only traveler on earth that wants to go back to work?

There's no place like work, there's no place like work, there's no place like work.....

If there are indeed people reading this blog who don't know Bill and me personally, they probably are a bit confused as to who we are, since we do not have a "who we are" or "about us" tab conveniently located at the top of the screen. I'm not going to get into anything real deep here about who I am, finding myself, and a bunch of other existential crap but I have learned a bit about myself on this trip, the big whopper being that I actually want to go back to work. I'm like, looking forward to it. Crazy right?!

I am a lingerie designer. If any recruiters in NYC are reading this I have worked on everything- baby dolls, panties, juniors, loungewear; some very sexy crotchless stuff to some very conservative grandma stuff. I can do it all! Please get me a job! Thanks! I loved my job and without blowing my own horn too much, I personally think I was pretty good at it too. Before I got into lingerie I worked for a small designer making very expensive and gorgeous sportswear. Sportswear are not things you work out in, it is a category in fashion that denotes separates. Skirts, jackets, pants, tops, etc.. I have never sat in a cubicle in my life. In fact I had a big office with a window! My job was, at times, incredibly creative and challenging. I even got to travel to Asia a bit, and hopefully at my next job I'll get to travel even more. You want me to go hopping across Europe for a week on an all expense paid shopping spree through London, Rome and Paris? No problem! Of course there were some very stressful moments, late nights, and the usual inter office bullshit that comes when anyone has to work with another human being. Throw in the huge fashion egos and a couple of gay guys to the mix and there is going to be drama in the workplace. (I'm going to say this now before I get emails saying I offended a gay person- I love the gays and the gays love me, I'm like the #1 fag hag ever. Besides, what I said is true and you know it) the fashion business is a tough business, not for the faint of heart or the thin skinned. There have been so many times I presented my work to a room full of people and they said "oh my god i hate that". There have been meetings where I've been told such and such style was not selling in the stores, that I needed to come up with something better. There have also been times I really pushed for something I loved and it ended up being a hit. Fashion is like art, it's all subjective, and at the end of the day it was bunch of old men at the executive level trying to tell me that women don't like black underwear. Really? In what universe?

So the point is, I didn't quit my job and take this trip because I was trying to escape the rat race or I was unhappy or I felt like I was doing meaningless drivel for a paycheck. 10 years ago I was going through some very serious personal shit and I moved on August 18th, 2001 to New York to go to college at the F.I.T. It was a complete upheaval of my life and the best decision that I ever made, and the best decision my father ever made concerning me. (thanks dad!) That first year was the most insane, emotionally explosive- and now that I look back on it- therapeutically healing year of my life. How I managed to stay alive and out of jail is beyond me, its how I know there is a God, but those are all stories for another time... Or never actually. So these 10 years go by and for a long time I had been feeling like I needed a change. I needed to shake things up to keep myself sane, to keep my perspective in check. I had also been feeling like i was getting the designers equivalent of writers block and I needed to clear my head and get back some of the electric energy I had been drained of over time. It was an idea Bill and I tossed around for years. We met people who had done the RTW thing, we thought about it then decided against it. Then we started meeting more and more and more people who had done it, but the timing wasn't right. Then we decided that we should actually do the wedding thing because we had been engaged for over a year and hadn't even thought of wedding plans and suddenly it was like (forgive the cheesy cliché I'm about to drop here, but this really was what it was like) the stars aligned and the universe was screamed LETS DO THIS THING MOFOS!!!

In all seriousness though... It was the right time. We were getting married and this would be our honeymoon. As we were deciding to do this, my company put the division I worked for up for sale. I would either be laid off or make the move with the new people to jersey, the latter prevailed. My commute doubled but it allowed me to keep saving for the wedding/trip for an extra 6 months. Bill had been working an awesome freelance gig for awhile so with some serious scrimping on our parts we really did have the money to go, and come back with a cushion.

Now it's been 5 months on the road, with 3 weeks to go. I've never not had a job since I was 16 so the whole not working thing has been a little weird, I've felt a little lazy. I also realized rather quickly that having a job meant that Bill and I spent roughly 10-12 hours a day away from each other and now we were together 24 hours a day/7 days a week. Days would go by and we wouldn't have any real interaction with other people besides each other. As much as I love him, I don't want to see his face 24 hours a day. Working also put me on a time table which made the rest of my life easier to schedule; like laundry, grocery shopping, the gym, yoga class and happy hour with my friends. Do you understand how hard it is for me to motivate myself to do the 8 minute abs routine after waking up at 10am and taking an hour to eat breakfast? Life has been an eternal Saturday for the last five months and as much as that sounds wonderful, the truth is Saturdays are so great because they only happen once a week. Let's see... What else.... Oh yeah I LOVE making money!! Getting a paycheck every week for doing a job that you like and are good at is pretty freakin sweet. Spending that hard earned cash on guilty pleasures for myself, family and friends every once in awhile is even sweeter. Most of all I'm ready to go back because I honestly miss doing what I do. This has been the experience of a lifetime, and I literally mean that because we aren't ever going to do this again, but it's time to return to reality..... Or my reality at least, which I've noticed is quite different than let's say, the reality of an office clerk in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Now I just need to cross my fingers, update my resume and actually GET a job. I'll be available for interviews Dec.16th :)

-Claire