There are days when I wonder how in the world I ended up at this point. Before I became a mom I was a career gal with a 6 figure salary, a clean house, and a car devoid of crumbs. But, I was less than excited about worrying about supply chains, database debugging, and the hourly meetings where the only changes were the topic and a few of the participants. My first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage that was occurring while I was in a meeting discussing the crisis of the day: the mismatch of numbers between what our system was reporting and what the supplier was reporting. At that time I just couldn't believe people could get that worked up about some crazy report in a crazy structure that our complex and crazy society created to keep the human race organized, busy, and productive. On my commute to work I would watch other people in the cars, typically going it solo, stopping and going to get to some office where they would do some job like some cog in some wheel. I would make my daily escape for a walk in the hills, listening to birds, letting the sweat drip down my body. I wasn't alone. There were others like me, running and walking these paths just a couple of miles from the freeway, but it felt like so much further. But I wanted more...and less.
Right before my son was born, almost 10 years (a decade!) ago, we moved away from the land of freeways, beaches, million dollar starter homes, and silicon valleys. We moved to where the mountains meet the prairies, still close to a city, just not The City. I didn't work. My husband had the job. I had the money for house down payments, cars, and the extras, his job was to provide for the monthlies. It wasn't exactly what I expected. I had a very hard transition and upon retrospect got fairly depressed not sure how to proceed without an external schedule to meet. But I grew to find comfort in our little routines. A couple of years after the birth of our twins I started to explore outside of the cocoon of home in which I had become enveloped. I was motivated to exercise, eat healthfully and mindfully, and I started to look at my next steps. What would I be?
Even after being away from work for several years at this point I was still feeling the burn out. I looked into retraining, reeducating. My husband decided that he too needed to find a new outlet. Not happy in his engineering work he decided to pursue finance. He loved the numbers, loved the market, and wanted to learn how to play. After an 18 month masters program he found that he was trained to do little in terms of real work. His one opportunity took us to the East Coast, not New York, but to an area in Maryland about 45 minutes away from the Beltway. We tried to feel the excitement of being on the East Coast, so close to all the wonderful areas to explore. For our kids the move was okay. The school was great, our neighborhood was great. I, however, felt unsettled and tried to focus on working on the house, painting, painting, painting. I picked the brightest, boldest colors which I now see I used to try get out of my unhappiness, dreariness. In this land of trees I felt so closed in and lost. And financially things were gloomy. We couldn't sell our old house until months after we moved. My husband's job didn't pay nearly what his engineering work did. After covering the monthlies for the 18 months he was in school, I still had to break the nest egg to pay monthly bills. I wasn't just lost, I became angry, tired of bailing out the financial waters. My husband's job wasn't what he wanted and he became stressed and angry. "I cannot continue to do this", he insisted. He ended up leaving the job after one year. No other jobs came along. He tried to daytrade, but the market was bear. It's easy to make money on the bulls, but timing is everything when it isn't, so is psychology. After another year we ended up going back to where we had been happy where the prairies end and the mountains begin, to where you can see for miles, not hidden in the trees.
Job-wise the situation was no better. Less was invested in the house which helped, but it was still tight. We had to sell our other house at a loss. The moves had eaten up My husband took a low paying job at a new hedge fund, hoping to learn and be involved in the business. He was more like an intern which is hard to take when you are in your 40's. That job folded with the hedge fund and none have come along since.
We live in a much smaller house, but we're comfortable in it. Our kids love their neighborhood and the school. They are much more adaptable than their parents. We're still searching for our next steps, two former professionals trying to find a new way.
