I want THAT job...

I would really like to know how Samantha Brown on the Travel Channel managed to get her job. Did she just accidentally wind up with the best job in the world? Or was there some kind of planning involved? In case you never watch the Travel Channel – Samantha Brown started out a few years ago with a show called “Great Vacation Homes,” where she traveled all over the country and stayed in people’s vacation homes. Then she moved on to “Great Hotels” where she traveled all over the country and stayed in hotels – which was a step up from those vacation homes, because now she was sampling room service and spa services and area shopping. She had an entire series based in Hawaii, where she went island hopping and stayed in cool hotels and went to luaus and hung out on the beach drinking mai tais. And I guess, after she’d visited just about every hotel worth visiting in North America, she decided to branch out to Europe last year. In her new series, she travels all over Europe, staying in cool hotels and visiting historical landmarks and sampling local cuisine and shopping for souvenirs.

And I see where this is going – eventually she’ll move on to Asia, where she’ll travel from country to country, staying in cool hotels and trying different kinds of foods and buying souvenirs… and then Africa… and Australia… South America. She’ll probably hit Antarctica, just for the fun of it, and stay in a research station with a bunch of scientists. She will have traversed the entire world, and stayed in every famous and comfortable and lavish hotel in existence. That in itself is enough to make anyone with wanderlust more than a little jealous. But the best part of her many, many travels is that this is her JOB – she gets PAID to visit hotels and try out the room service. The very fact that she travels provides the salary needed to buy all those souvenirs. It’s a strange and wonderful sort of paradox that most of us (or that I, at least) could only hope to be wound up in.

So like I was saying, I’d really like to know how she ended up with such a sweet gig. I mean, I would be more than happy to run around the world, visiting interesting places, staying in expensive hotels, and writing about everything I’d experienced. I could lay on the beach in Hawaii drinking mai tais, and then write up a little article about it:

“It was sunny. And sandy. I drank a mai tai. Then I went back to my hotel room. It has a bed. And a coffee table. And a bathroom with little bottles of shampoo and conditioner. It costs a lot of money to stay here, but I didn’t have to pay because this is my job. Tonight I’ll order room service, and let everyone know how great the food tastes. I might have another mai tai…”

Okay, I’d have to tweak the writing just a bit, but you get the idea. The point is, some people, it seems, have managed to wind up with really amazing jobs. Just kind of out of the blue. Because I have never seen a want ad for “world traveler” in my local newspaper. Or even on Monster.com, for that matter. It’s possible, of course, to find employment that requires travel – probably to less-than-exciting locales, where your company will gladly compensate you for a few nights in the La Quinta. But I suppose you could, if you felt compelled, write an article about it:

“Tonight I’m in El Paso. It’s a little scary. The hotel is in a bad neighborhood. My room has a bed. And a coffee table. And a bathroom, but they forgot to leave me any little bottles of shampoo or conditioner. It costs about 80 bucks to stay here, but my company is paying for it. Tonight I might venture out to the Subway across the street and buy a sandwich. I wish there was a mini bar…”

Oh well. In lieu of actual “world traveler” employment, I guess I’ll just have to keep watching the Travel Channel. At least I can live vicariously through Samantha Brown…