Day 5 Nashville- the end!

I’m home! Yesterday, Friday, was Day 5 in Nashville and my final conference day.

I was glad it was an abbreviated day (starting at 8:00, ending at 2:00 instead of 5:00) because I really was suddenly starting to feel at my saturation point of listening to presentations!

I mean, it really was a great conference and I’m so glad I went. And maybe this is nothing for people who do this all the time. But whew, for me? This was a LOT! I am not used to:

a) sitting still for so long! At home I’m up and down frequently to make tea, run to bathroom, etc. and I felt like a captive audience here.

b) “learning” nonstop for 8 hours a day. haha. I’ve been out of school for a long time now! So the whole “sit and pay close attention to complex topics and take notes” part of me is a little rusty.

c) not having any breathing room in my days. At home in between meetings I can just sort of stare off into space if I want. Here, I was directly with other people basically from 7 am until ~10 pm every day, with maybe a 1 hour break to change clothes/ get ready in the evening. Obviously we had coffee and lunch breaks, but they weren’t true breaks where I could just get away. Lunches were “networking lunches” involving constant chatter, and the coffee breaks were usually short and everyone was still around. I found myself kind of craving a few minutes to just like, mindlessly scroll on my phone or something in peace. HAHA.

Anyway, like I said, I truly enjoyed this week, but it also felt pretty intense! (As evidenced by, I slept in this morning (Saturday, at home) until 8 am! I NEVER sleep that late anymore- like I normally literally can’t. Guess I was a bit exhausted.)

Ok, so not really too much to report on the last day, but closing this out for completeness’ sake! 🙂

My final “worky” outfit….. (annnnnd today back to leggings and a tank and flip flops. The professional dress was fun while it lasted. 😆)

It was actually quite warm in the conference room so I barely even wore the cute jacket, though. Some people wore jeans to this final day, knowing they’d be traveling, but honestly? These particular black pull on dress pants feel like wearing sweatpants! They’re hard to see in the lighting. But they’re kind of a loose fit, ankle length and just super comfy. So I was happy to travel in them.

More presentations….

We had a shorter 30 minute boxed lunch which included really tasty sandwiches, chips and a delicious cookie. Some people had earlier flights and had to cut out a bit early. The final, closing keynote speaker address was SO good, and I felt bad that he was actually delivering such a great message to a smaller crowd! I feel like they should have had him do the “closing address” as the first speaker of the final day instead, when everyone was still there.

The last presentation ended at 2:00 and we had an Uber waiting to get us at 2:10.

3 out of 4 of us had flights around similar time, though none of us were actually on the same flight. (1 coworker lives in a different state. My boss and I were both heading back to Madison, and both through Chicago, but we ended up with just slightly different flight times on different airlines.)

Not gonna lie, I was really looking forward to getting to the airport early and just sort of collapsing into a chair somewhere with a beverage and my book or blogs to read in silence. But, no dice. We all were in same terminal with gates not too far away. So my coworker, my boss and I ended up hanging out and chatting at a table for the ~1.5 hours before we had to board. It was nice.🙃

I grabbed a Chick-Fil-A sandwich for the road and my flight to Chicago took off about 5:20.

Everything was smooth sailing, minus the landing where I swear we were going wayyyyy too fast still when the wheels touched down. (As we were coming in for the landing I was like, uhhhh why does it feel like we’re still going 500 mph?!?!) It was a little sketchy and for a brief moment I thought welp, this is it, nice knowin’ ya’ll, we’re going to lose control and crash and burn, but, somehow he held on and we survived. 😅

I had less than an hour in Chicago before boarding the 9 pm flight to Madison. We taxied for so long before take off that I am pretty sure we drove at least to the state line. LOL. It’s such a quick flight from ORD–> Madison (maybe 30 minutes in the air?)

(Although I was texting with my dad, and it’s a little ironic- from Madsion to Nashville it’s a 9 hour drive. I left my hotel at 2:10 pm, and touched down in Madison at 9:56 p.m. So basically 8 hours from start to finish. I could practically have just driven in the same amount of time….. ha.)

And now I’m home! A great week all in all.

*Disclaimer- I feel a little self-conscious writing all this detail about a work conference and making a “big deal” out of it like I just went to Antarctica or something. 😂 I’m sure for those of you who travel all the time for work or go to 5 conferences a year, a trip like this would not even register as something of interest. But it was honestly a special little treat for me!!! So, thank you for not making fun of me and allowing me to indulge in my excitement over here. hahaha.

Now I have just one week home- with about 8,425 work tasks that I need to now cram in- before we leave for Mexico and I’m off for another week. Actually Ivan leaves Thursday already!

My weekend mission= FIND SHOES FOR MY DRESS, STAT.

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful for having a couple days off now to unwind/recover before the workweek which already looks insane and getting ready to go to Mexico…