Everyone has a picture in their head of what it looks like when your job takes you to the Super Bowl.
Players. Parties. Exclusive events. Networking in places normal people can’t get into. That part is not wrong. It exists. I’m not going to pretend the access isn’t real, because it is, and I’m genuinely grateful for it.
But here’s what the highlight reel doesn’t show.
The months of preparation before you ever get on a plane. The logistics, the approvals, the run-of-show documents, the contingency plans, the stakeholder alignment conversations that happen over and over until everyone agrees on something.
Then you get there, and the days are long. Not “long day at the office” long. Long in the way where you’re still working in your home time zone and your current time zone at the same time. Your body doesn’t know what hour it is, but there’s a meeting in twenty minutes so it doesn’t matter.
You’re away from your family. You’re on. All the time. The kind of “on” that requires a different level of focus and presence than your normal week, and you have to sustain it for days straight.
The events are incredible. The execution, when it comes together, is genuinely worth all of it. Standing there watching something you planned for months actually happen is a feeling I can’t fully put into words.
I feel privileged to do this work. I mean that. But I also want to be honest about what it costs, because the people around me deserve to understand what they’re supporting when I travel for something like this.
It’s not a vacation with a work veneer on it. It’s work, with some really remarkable moments inside it.
Both things are true.