parenting

Remember When I Quit My Job Last Year? What Happened Next?

/ Adventure This Life / 4 Comments

It’s Saturday morning, still dark outside, and STILL snowing. I woke up just before six, not on purpose, and felt rested — or antsy enough — to actually get out of bed. The boys are still sleeping and the house is quiet, especially now that our stir-crazy indoor/outdoor cat, Turnip, AKA: The Stray-that-Came-to-Stay, has been put outside. So, sipping dandelion tea and listening to The Highwomen album (best. album. ever.), I figured it’s about time I write. I mean, the ambiance is perfect — time, quiet, and inspiration…

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Our goofy, adorable, feisty Cutie Cat, Turnip

So let’s ease into it, shall we? (It is early after all)

You may recall from my post last year, that I quit my job November 2018 with no known or determined plans for the future. Just faith that it was the best thing for my mental and emotional well-being and that our family would be just fine. And you know what? I was right on both accounts. It took time, but I’ve recovered to my same optimistic self and we’ve been thriving financially.

So what have I been doing since quitting my job?

The short answer is consulting. The longer answer is…

After leaving my long-time corporate gig November 2018, I took the rest of the year off to do farm business planning and just enjoy a bit of time off before jumping back into another gig. I cleaned my house and kept it clean — mostly. I volunteered with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Barron County. I hosted 24 people for an entire weekend for Christmas. I finished our business plan. I hung with my kids. And most importantly, I gave myself a much needed mental and emotional reprieve. I had been operating under such a high-level of chronic stress for so long, I was suffering, in a way I’d never experienced before. And I needed to get better.

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Hosting 24 people Christmas 2018. My cousins and their children.

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Everybody using their new sleds on our super awesome sledding hill

During my time off, I reached out to a consulting agency December 2018 that I’ve hired from in the past and been courting for the last year. They had an opportunity for me within 10 days for after the New Year. A REMOTE opportunity. Friends, I had been looking for a remote gig for like two years with no luck, then this opportunity came to me after I let go –stopped worrying so much about the future and started trusting it instead. I interviewed and was hired for a four-month contract at a global healthcare tech company after just one, 30-minute interview.

Quick side note: one of my professional goals was to get experience in the tech industry. Check!

I started February 2019 and have been extended four times since. My current contract, with the same company, is set to end May 2020. They even let me work three days a week during the summer so I could help Nick with the farmers markets and sent me to Vegas to attend Adobe Summit.

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Here I’m eating gelato at the Venetian

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And here, I’m getting my serious face on with by bud, Bruce on the Vegas strip.

Friends, I want to restate something for you. I left a good-paying, great-benefits job trusting that I’d be okay, and I was. I got a contract gig that pays me more, lets me work remotely, let me work just three days a week in the summer, and is in tech. Where I come from, that’s practically unheard of.

So what’s next?

Now that my confidence has been restored and I’m in a much better mental and emotional state of well-being, Nick and I have actually been discussing the possibility of me going back to work as a full-time employee. Now, I feel a bit like a sell-out saying that, so let me explain the reason behind this possible course of action…

One word — STABILITY. Nick and I have been through so many changes these last two years with both quitting our jobs, selling our houses, moving to a new state, starting a business, and helping our twin 7-year-old boys manage their own feelings and emotions (on top of our’s) through all this change. A bit of stability might be in order.

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My sweet boys and me on my 37th birthday this December

Though, I still don’t consider myself a corporate girl, I am discovering there are jobs out there that can offer me the creative freedom, flexibility, salary, and intellectual stimulation I so desperately desire.

Our hopes is that by me moving to a consistent, decent-paying salary we can hire a part-time, temporary employee for the farm to help Nick out this season. ‘Cause let’s be honest, as much I don’t like to admit it, I’m not exactly the braun this operation needs. Plus, we’d like to throw as much money into this farm now so we can keep growing it to the scale we want.

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Testing our our new seeder the first year on the farm

Making a work transition takes time, so things could remain the same for awhile, or we could decide on a completely different direction. But in the meantime, I’m allowing myself to be open to exploring all that’s out there with a whole new perspective.

 

 

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Where has our child-like faith in ourselves gone?

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And can we get it back?

I remember as a child believing I could fly. I’d tie a towel around my neck, swing as high as I could on the backyard swing, then at its highest point, I’d jump — and I’d fly. Never mind that I was told that people can’t fly. And so what if I crashed to the ground on all fours only a second later. I had flown and I knew it. All I had to do to fly was believe and try. The two most natural and innate things to a child.

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Then I became an adult, a wife, a mom, a career woman, and somewhere along the way I stopped believing that I could fly. I lost sight of the sky to the view of a shingled roof and bad fluorescent lights. I started doubting my gifts and talents and what I was capable of, trading my child-like faith in myself for financial security, safety, and reputation.

I swapped my faith for fear and my dreams for reality because that’s what adults do and that’s what they teach their children. “Get a job.” “Buy a house.” “Provide for your family.” “Make something of yourself.” “Have the things we couldn’t provide for you.” “Be better than us.”

What adults forget when they’re no longer children, is as children we never wanted more than we had — not really. We played swords with broken branches, traveled the seas and made our friends walk the plank on old seesaws, became stately queens of great lands in our mother’s old worn heels, and flew the skies with dragons and unicorns in worn, dusty towels. Everything we had was enough. We were enough.

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As children we found ourselves equal to kings and queens, presidents and celebrities, geniuses and philanthropists, the homeless and the sick, the poor and the rich, and the athletes and handicapped. We believed that we could do or become anything or anyone and so could everyone else. We believed we were enough — all of us.

Last week during my weekly two-hour commute home from work, for a brief moment I felt that belief again. And I reached for it, rejoiced over it and mourned over my loss of it.  Then I wondered why I ever stopped believing in myself? Why was it so difficult now to believe I am capable of anything when as a child I innately believed in my invincibility?

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So, this is my goal: to fly again, even when others say it’s not possible, even if I inevitably fall to my hands and knees over and over again. I need to at least believe and try. Because how much more beautiful and fulfilling would life be if we all started believing we could fly?