Work Attitudes

I have recently moved from one team to another within the same department. My old role was client facing and involved a lot of travel. A lot of the travel was last-minute to fire-fight client problems. I am not sure if this is how it is done in other offices, but travelling was always haphazard when it came to our office. No confirmation of plans till the night before, just a few hours to book flights, accommodation and take care of other travel arrangements. At the time, it suited me just fine and I have undertaken many a travels in this fashion. Often the excitement of going to a new country and sometimes a new continent (for instance South Africa) sustained me and in fact, I thrived on it.

I moved team in the early stages of my pregnancy. I had planned to move team around the end of my pregnancy, but things turned out quite differently. I was asked to work on a long-term project across the pond (for those not familiar with this terminology - I mean USA), which involved regular travel. I checked with my doctor about travelling in the first trimester and she told that its advisable to not travel. So I had to tell my immediate boss about why I did not want to work on that project and asked to work on a local UK project. Around the same time, I decided to move team and actively started working on that, because a lot of our projects were in the US. So I have not travelled on work for over an year now. Frankly, I dont miss it either.

The reason I am reminded about all of this is because a colleague of mine has been constantly asking me why I dont travel anymore. Its not as if he doesnt know about my daughter either. I have told him umpteen times that I have a good enough reason and I am not interested in travelling, yet he asks me about twice a week !! On Friday, I had to explicitly tell him yet again that I am not interested in travelling to the US on Sunday. I cant quite understand why he asks me so often - its not as if he asks me 10 times, I am going to get fed up and say yes the 11th time, am I ? He says he doesnt want to travel and so I should go ?? I dont get it - I have decided to just ignore him and put it to down to drinking too much over the week..