I just had what I think is maybe the worst day of self-inflicted travel mistakes you can imagine. I've had frustrating days of travel - delays, having to sleep in a random hotel overnight because I couldn't make my connection, re-routing to another airport, etc - but I've never had a day where I inflicted all the problems on myself.

It started at my home airport. I went through security and got snacks like a normal day. I was waiting in line about to board when I hear my name over the loudspeaker. I step out and run back to security, unable to imagine what they could possibly want and contemplating they are calling someone else with my same name. I get there and see my very expensive, very necessary laptop sitting there. Somehow, I took all my other stuff out of my three bins but left my laptop behind. I have to run back to board my flight. Thank goodness I didn't get an earlier boarding group or I would've never heard the announcement. And thank goodness I plastered my name (and phone number and email address) on the bottom of my laptop.

Then, I get to my connection airport and when I pay for lunch, I leave my credit card in the checkout card reader because there's no chime. So I walk away and am waiting for my food to come out when I hear the cashier call out my name. Thank goodness another customer went to use that credit card machine or my card would've stayed sitting there.

But this one takes the cake. I finally land to my final destination, head over to the baggage belt, anxious to get my bag since my ride just got to the airport to pick me up. I see my very distinctively patterned suitcase, grab it and bolt. After 10 minutes in the car, I get a phone call. "Do you have your luggage?" "Yes." "No you don't, because I have it here." I look in the backseat and see it's the same design, but not mine. I have to turn around back to the airport and switch them. I feel terrible for the traveler I've inconvenienced, and when I get there, the Southwest baggage women chastises me, as if I don't already know I screwed up badly and should've been more careful. Back when I had a solid gray luggage, I always carefully checked for the ribbons and tags I put on it, but this bag had such a loud design, I figured it had to my mine and I didn't closely examine it. Thank goodness I had my name and phone number on my bag so they could quickly call me and the woman whose bag I took only got delayed about 30 minutes instead of a whole day as they tried to get a hold of me.

I don't know how I screwed up so much in one day, other than the fact that I only got a couple hours of sleep the night before. I'm always that person that will be silently judgmental when other people make screw ups as if they don't know the commonsense basics of travels, but somehow I imagined to screw everything up and be that person that everyone thinks is an idiot. I've never done any of these things before, and I managed to do them all in one day.