many miles

Where am I? That was my very first thought when I woke up this morning. For a few moments I had absolutely no idea where I was. I looked around the room for some visual clues — it all seemed familiar, all too familiar. But it took a few moments for me to realize that I was in my hotel room in Greensboro, NC.

I travel quite a bit, and this has happened a few times before. I wake up in some hotel room and don’t know immediately where I am. What throws me off is that most hotel rooms look so much alike, and many are in fact identical, especially within hotel brands (stay at different Hyatt Place hotels and you’ll see what I mean).

If you then add lots of travel, and the fact that one usually gets to the hotel at night (after a long day of travel and/or meetings), then I guess it’s no wonder that the brain can’t keep up.

Maybe it’s “Old Age” … not so funny when you think about it. Can you imagine what it would be like to never know where you are? I think the strangest feeling is when something is just vaguely familiar. That that throws you off just enough to never be certain, and I think it’s that uncertainty that makes one feel uncomfortable, sometimes even a bit unsafe.

Now, is that this temporary feeling of disorientation only happens when I’m on at least somewhat familiar turf. In other words, it does not happen when I go to truly exciting and/or exotic places (that’s right, not all exciting places are exotic, and not all exotic places are exciting … more about that some other time). For example, it never happened when I went to India, even though I went there quite a few times, or in Bangkok, and never in Europe.

It did happen in Singapore once, but I’m fairly certain that was due to travel fatigue, serious jet lag, and possibly all the wine we had during dinner the night before — yes, sometimes there are simple explanations for life’s mysteries.

UPDATE:

• copied from my old website
• minor language/grammar tweaks