It’s not Luck!

So it’s no secret that I like to have fun.  I like to travel as much as possible, going to concerts, party, going to theme parks, and generally just enjoying life.  I have been pretty successful at filling my life with excitement.  I get bored really easily so it’s almost like fun is an addiction that I absolutely just need to fill.  With that said, there’s one thing that people say to me that makes me want to break things. People say to me “you’re so lucky, I wish I could do all of those things!”  It literally drives me nuts!  I find it downright offensive when any of the things I do are called luck. Luck? No I didn’t win the lottery, I’m not a millionaire, I didn’t even find a golden ticket in my wonka bar!  All of the fun things that I do that they consider “luck” are part of decisions that I have made, often times calculated decisions.  Now with that said, I am lucky that I have flight benefits (my mom works for delta), but previous to that I did have an airline job myself for two years.  So yeah it’s nice that she works there, but if she didn’t I’d still find a way to feed my travel addiction, like get another airline job myself, or work out deals with my old work friends.  If you want something, you just have to make it happen!  One other thing people often use as an excuse not to have fun is time, they don’t have time off of work blah blah blah. Well that’s why I do what I do, as of right now I work marketing events and promotions as my main source of income (there is a link for my guide to working promotions at the top of this page).  That work is always contracted for a certain amount of time, which allows me to pick and choose what I want to work and allows me to leave nice chunks of time in my schedule (they usually pay pretty well too).  Also, I know how to find work like this all over the country, so a lot of times my trips might also involve me working as well. 

In addition to working events and promotions, I work seasonally for both Walt Disney World and Universal Studios.  Working jobs seasonally allows me to pick up hours when I’m in Florida, but also gives me a tremendous amount of flexibility that a full-time or even part-time job don’t allow.  Just this week I work at both them parks and have a promotion I’m working.  So I mean it’s pretty simple, you decide what you want and then you make decisions that allow you to do just that.  You wanna travel but you think it costs too much? Get an airline job! You like going to Disney World but you think it’s too expensive? Get a seasonal job there and work 150 hours a year and you get in free for the entire year! Need free time? Consider contract work or work a couple of seasonal jobs!  It takes a little research and a little work, but it’s not rocket science, and it most definitely is NOT LUCK!!!

Random Vegas Trip on an hour's notice? Why not?

So I’ve been to Vegas before, but I always wanted to be out there when they hold the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES).  Every year electronics companies and industry people from all over the world descend upon sin city to show off of and check out all of the new technology that it is on the horizon.  I’m talking everything from new TVS, videogames, cars, all kinds of stuff!  All the new stuff gets demonstrated and prototypes are shown off, you get to see stuff that may be coming out next week, or in 10 years, or sometimes stuff that will never even actually be released at all.  The convention is huge, and I’ve followed it for years but never actually attempted to go.

As you may or may not know, for the past year and a half I’ve been working different events and promotions for different companies.  I pick up random work promoting different stuff, it’s pretty fun and I can find work pretty much anywhere in the U.S. for short periods of time, and for big conventions like CES there are usually a ton of opportunities.  I had already flirted with the idea of working it last year and I knew I had some friends doing it this year so I applied to a couple of things out there.  I was kinda lazy and only applied for like 2 things; of course I didn’t hear anything until after day 1 of CES was already in the books.  This was a Tuesday night and they wanted me to come down to work weds-fri, but since there were no more flights that night I had to tell them that I couldn’t do it unless I could just work thurs-fri.  And of course they didn’t hit me back up until like 830pm on weds night.  But I said what the hell? Let me check flights really quick, sure enough there was another flight at 830 that night. I told them that I had to contact my friend to see if I could crash in his hotel room, and that I’d call them back when I knew.  I told em if they find anyone else first, go ahead and hire him or her.  I successfully scrambled to make arrangements and called back 20 minutes later, unfortunately they found somebody else.  But then I thought about it for a minute, why not just go for fun and try to check out CES? I literally stuffed my backpacked with a couple changes of close, and within 10 minutes I was off to the airport.