Ten past eight on Friday. Airline lounge, cooling heels, waiting on a bing-bong to herald my departure to my Arrival.

Generally this is one of my favorite parts of any trip, whether it's a day or a couple of weeks. This is the space where I get to reflect on the time away, and what that time has held and imparted, before the buzz of a more normal life begins again.

This trip, this refelction, is somehow richer. The context is varied, but the main vein is rooted in a fresh revelation of what I'm doing, in a professional sense. This is more than just a job. My day-to-day impacts how people feel about the place they work, the people the work with, the work they are doing. It impacts how people feel about themselves.

This week I missed my girls incredibly. I missed hearing about their days. I missed sharing life. I missed the sparkle. I missed saving them from the yukkie bits of life. I missed the connection to home life that comes through folding laundry and cleaning the kitchen at the end of the day.

The void that miss-age created was filled, however, with a group of very interesting gentlemen. Ockers. Passionate salesmen who spend their days in some of the remotest parts of Australia, who love the work they do, and are frustrated by not being able to do it as they see best. How common is that story! Blokes who love their footie, their aussie reds, their families and the feeling that the contribute to something Big.

And talking to them over dinner was like being transported back 15 years to tobacco farms in Zimbabwe. The same issues. The same thirst to try and control the uncontrollable. The same philosophical laugh when we all agree at the end of a heated conversation that there are some things we should just accept.

I love how, in an ever changing, ever evolving world, that there are constants. To change, to grow to something new, there has to be a start point. A weird thought has just struck me, and it's hard to articulate. We spend our lives changing, but it seems that we're constantly changing from the same start point. We change, we evolve, we adapt, and then seem to come full circle back to some place of Constant, before we need to change, evolve and adapt again.

Is that true? Or is that pie-in-the-sky?

No clue. Worth thinking about though, and think I will. But now it's time to board a sophisticated tin can, and wing my way back to Haven Space.

Bing-bong.