St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands was the destination for my last assignment. A company for which we did work wanted our help, and I was staffed to assist with User Experience work. On the surface, this was fantastic for a number of reasons: despite living in the warmer, central Texas climate, I welcomed the opportunity to work some place tropical during the winter; for the first time in nearly two years, I’d be doing hands-on UX work, and not just leading application support teams or managing an internal project; and I’d be reunited with colleagues that I enjoyed working with on previous projects. Working in St. Thomas alone, especially during the busy high season, would also invite some opportunities for fun on the time away from work, which helped take my mind off the personal relationship issues.

For the first two or so months, I lived in a Best Western by the airport, before moving into corporate housing on the East End of St. Thomas. The Best Western wasn’t horrible: we were fortunate enough to always have rooms, despite the swarms of newlywed and older couples, spring breakers, and families on vacation; the hotel was situated on a nice stretch of beach, even if it was by the airport; toilets and showers worked for the most part; we always had clean towels and linens, either by taking them from the cleaning staff’s carts or squirreling them away for the leaner moments when we didn’t have them; and the cable TV and internet sometimes worked. Corporate housing worked out better for us, since we had apartments maintained by timeshare owners, a cleaning lady who would come once a week, a view of the bay and easy access to the beach, and a more convenient spot to hit the better restaurants and bars, despite being on the other side of the island where the office was.

In the first month of the project, I managed to fly back home twice: once after my first week, and another at the end of the month of February. Though February was a short month, I didn’t take my second flight home until after three weeks. I spent an extended amount of time in Austin in March for SXSW, but I still didn’t fly back much that month. In April, in an effort to break the monotony of simply flying home on the weekends, I made a point to fly out to see friends and family, spending the first three weekends visiting Los Angeles, Connecticut and New York, respectively. I only flew twice in May and June, both times back to Austin, including the final trip home. All the frequent flying caused me to earn enough points/miles to reach status on Delta, which meant complimentary upgrades to first/business class when available. This also meant free drinks, an in-flight meal, and a comfortable seat, which I now say is the best and only way one should have to travel.

I can only recall two times where I actually used a kitchen to cook real meals in St. Thomas. Going out on the town was the norm for the team, which meant that we were always eating at restaurants and barely cooking at the apartment. The people that we met at these establishments were gracious hosts: always bringing us drinks, preparing our food well, and letting us share our days with them. We were welcomed as locals, regardless of how temporary and uncertain our situation was.

After reading all of this, one may think that I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth. Whenever I tell people — friends, family or those I’ve just met — about this assignment, I get looks of jealousy and envy. Not everyone gets to work in paradise, let alone have the major expenses — lodging, airfare, food — taken care of. As a traveling consultant, these things are normally covered, though where this was all taking place only brought out more jealousy and envy. I’m sure if I told people that I was working in South Dakota or Minnesota during the winter instead, they wouldn’t care as much (in fact, there may even be some genuine sympathy there).

Traveling 100% of my time seemed good to a single guy in theory and on the surface, but I felt like I lost some things along the way. Working outside of the office for so long, I felt disconnected from my colleagues, to the point where they had playfully referred to time and history of the office before and after I joined this project. The time away has affected me professionally, but I also think my personal life has been put on hold. Despite having the opportunity to be with friends and family in various locations on my weekends, it had come at the expense of spending even less time in Austin. I’ve only been living in Austin since January 2007, but I’ve only spent about four months or so of that time in the city itself. There was much about the city I hadn’t known or experienced, even to this day. I haven’t spent a significant amount of time working on my relationships with people who live here, the effects of my time away I won’t know until I pick up a phone and contact them.

Had I chosen to travel back to Austin every or most weekends, it would’ve put a tremendous strain on me physically and mentally. There is no easy way to get from Austin to St. Thomas; the Delta flight that connects me through Atlanta was the most palatable option available, but the route involves losing about eight hours of the day in airplanes and airports. Most of this time is devoted to catching up on sleep, and even afterwards I’m still exhausted and barely functional in the office when I eventually get there. Spending more time in St. Thomas kept the stress of travel down, but it also kept the stress of not being home up. I can only imagine how this type of travel would affect one with family and other major obligations. Fortunate or not, I don’t have many of these obligations, but having a routine at home and then having that broken is stressful enough.

For the times that I did travel home for weekends, I spent most of that time running errands: picking up held mail at the post office, cleaning the apartment, maintaining the car, among them. It was an endless struggle to simply catch up with life, and often times I’d be so exhausted that I wouldn’t even try, opting instead to nap or occupy myself in other ways. And because I would spend my Sunday nights packing for my early morning flight to Atlanta the next day, I’d hardly go out.

Going out to eat in St. Thomas is fun up to the point where one becomes limited by the restaurant options available and sticks to a small subset of those. No matter how good the food was where we went, we exhausted the options, but we still kept going back. Buying groceries on the island was more expensive than eating out, which didn’t work well for us, as we had daily caps on meal expenses. One could easy blow through the daily meal budget by buying a gallon of orange juice, a case of water, a carton of milk and soda. And this is just liquids! We would still hit the supermarket for these essentials, and watch what we spent for the rest of the day to make sure we were within a reasonable amount of that budget.

Despite all the good things involved with business travel, they are good to a degree. It’s important to find the right balance of time at home and away, making sure that you’re spending a fair amount of time tending to obligations in both places. This type of work — the type that can involve lots of travel — isn’t for everyone, not because it’s difficult, but because it can require more of a commitment than one can make. Being in a situation that isn’t supportive of or conducive to this commitment will only increase one’s stress level, and can negatively affect the rest of the project team. Even someone like myself, who’s own situation is more lenient in this regard, can feel the stresses of business travel, no matter the location, and even if it is St. Thomas.