Consultant: The pros and cons of traveling for work

So every, either Monday or Tuesday morning, I have a six AM, seven AM flight. I Uber to LaGuardia, and I cut it so I can leave my apartment at maybe 6:20 for a 7:15 flight. I've got global entry and TSA pre-check, so I can speed though the line some and enter the plane. And I'm generally either working on the plane or I try to sleep a little bit after the lack of sleep Sunday night. And then, we'll travel to wherever the client is, and for these sorts of short projects, it's really important to have that face-to-face time with the clients so we can meet with their senior leadership, if we need to meet with anyone junior on the team to understand how their processes work, how their organization is set up. And then, I'll stay in that city for two to three nights and then return home to New York, generally Thursday night, and then go into the New York office on Fridays. Every week, I'll come back, or there actually is a great perk, you can flex-travel, and so, instead of going back, I was in Tampa for a while, so instead of going back from Tampa to New York, it was a similar cost to fly to the Grand Cayman Islands. And so I'm actually really good friends with the people on my team, and so the three of us took a vacation to the Grand Cayman Islands. We didn't have to pay for flights, and for the hotels, we had enough points from staying at hotels during the week, and so we really didn't have to pay for much, you know, a drink here and there, but that was a lot of fun. So there are definitely a lot of perks from traveling. I've been to California on miles. I visited a lot of friends on all weekends. It just gets really hard when you have to pack for two weeks of work plus the weekend in between and not sleeping in your bed does get really, really tiring. I'm constantly living out of a suitcase. I actually leave a lot of stuff at the hotel, and so the hotel staff knows me, I have an extra pair of gym shoes there, extra heels, all my toiletries, and extra clothes, so I'm not bringing it back and forth every week. So I've tried to took a consultant lens to my life and said, "How can I make this more efficient? "How can I make my Sunday nights a lot more enjoyable?" I don't have to repack my suitcase every Sunday night. It's definitely easier if you don't have a family, if you don't have kids. I don't know how our partners do it. It definitely is a little bit more male-dominant at the senior level because our partners will travel to two to three clients per week. They are constantly on the road, and it is taking a toll on me. I've missed birthdays and other parties during the week. I can't see friends when I'm on the road, and so it definitely is hard to travel all the time.