Things I Thought About On a Business Trip

1. Cliches are for dusting conversation no more than once a day and maybe only several times a week at most if you are typically around the same people. They are best when used in jest. Be creative. Use your own quips.

2. Just because you are on a business trip you do not have to discuss only business with the people that are around you. Seriously.

3. Steel, glass, and concrete do not breathe. They are confining. If you are around a person, understand that they breathe and need fresh air sometimes.

4. Realize that if the human needs fresh air, sometimes it is just to get away from you.

5. If someone is difficult to be around, you do not have to be the one to break them of that.

6. Stop repeating yourself.

7. If you are well traveled, every conversation does not have to somehow relate back to some place that you used to live. No one cares how much like [insert large city name here] a certain thing or situation is.

8. If you are unhappy about something, you do not have to voice it. If your significant other is unpleasant to you, you do not have to tell everyone you meet about how angry they are at you all of the time. "Don't be a Debbie Downer!" (There's my cliche allotment for the month.)

9. Look for something positive about everything. Pleasant people are much easier to get along with.

10. Not everything is bad, ugly, or unpleasant. Something, somewhere has to be good. Really. Can't you find good in anything? Not even the person you've been in a relationship with for seven years? Have all seven years been unbearably loud and bad?

11. Atlanta is beautiful.

12. Atlanta Pinecones bite.

13. The guy with long hair at Caribou Coffee makes the best Mint Condition. Ever. Also the best coffee ever.

14. Caribou Coffee has my vote. I'd move here just for the coffee.

15. Being outside in a park with water and trees and grass and bugs after four days of rotating between tall buildings and a car is the best feeling. Ever. Hands down.

16. Being able to sleep in a business suite is rooooomy. King beds are big.

17. No, my job isn't the most interesting thing I could be doing, but it makes the rest of my life positively fascinating. Plus, I am one of the oddities that actually likes tech writing. So. I win.

18. I can survive a week like that and not become a murderess. I am stronger than I thought. Rawr.

19. Shopping is always better if the person you're with likes to shop. Duh. Also, it is better if you like the person you're shopping with.

20. Nothing feels better than a cool pair of jeans and some slippers and a sweatshirt after a week of nonsense shoes and pants made of too much synthetic material.