Well, here we are, more than ten years after my last post. So many things have changed in that time frame, both personally for me, politically for the U.S., and globally as well.
Let’s get you up to speed on me though. You last saw me when my husband and I were frolicking through Europe on what we had dubbed our “Mega-moon”. This epic two month trip fell almost a year after our actual wedding. We had decided that we would wait the year so J could finished his schooling, but before he had to begin his professional life, to have this unencumbered trip abroad.
Of course, as many of you know, pre-kids nothing anyone ever tells you can prepare you for how much you will miss those days of freedom. Days when you can meet a friend for lunch at the last minute, see an afternoon movie and then catch the next one just because you can, or stay out late at a friends and decide to sleep there because you’re too tired to drive home. It’s funny how our idea of freedom evolves at different stages in our lives. Now my idea of freedom involves a solo trip to Target with a coffee in hand and a $100 gift card burning a hole in my wallet.
I think my silence on this blog over the past several years is the best barometer of that change. In the ten years since, J and I have earned several higher education degrees between the two of us, had two awesome kids, moved three times between two different states, bought our first house, said goodbye to the dogs that we raised from puppies, and grown our love for each other in a million different ways.
But, that said, adulting is hard. Way harder than I ever imagined it would be as a petulant young adult. Having a job and kids and a mortgage and student loans and utility bills and groceries and meals to plan, and faces to feed, and nurture, and love, and teach, is utterly exhausting. Yes, yes. Rewarding and amazing and all that stuff. I love my little people more than anything in the world. You know all that though. What I hope you see from this blog though is that the ugly and hard and beautiful and self-conscious and angry and loved and tender can all coexist at once. That it’s okay to just be.
Let’s be clear from the beginning of this new era– I had my first child just as I was finishing my Masters degree from a major university and I chose to stay home because the amount of money I would make straight out of graduate school would be so greatly reduced by quality childcare that it didn’t seem to work for our family. We were fortunate enough that we could scrape by with me staying home even if largely on my husband’s minimum wage job (medical residency). I have loved my time home, but I’m not going to sugar coat it by saying it’s been a dream come true. I never sat home as a child and imagined myself as anything other than a working woman; a feminist who would take no prisoners at whatever profession I decided upon. That’s the thing though- the dream of myself as a working professional adult never fleshed itself out. I never held one profession in such esteem that it became a goal of which I wanted to achieve. I saw my mom work her ass off and “love her job”, but miss out on doing much of anything with us. She was always either working or napping it seemed. I wanted more time with her because she was so kind to us, but I understood that her life’s fulfillment came from arenas not exclusive of us. That said, I think it ingrained in me a priority not of living to work, but of working to live the life I wanted, and really nothing more.
That’s where we find ourselves today. Academic life was different. It never seemed like work. I wanted to read and immerse myself in the research and love of learning. It was exciting and fulfilling to me to be in that environment. If college/graduate school/medical school could go on forever and we could just get paid to read and learn and research we would both probably jump at the chance. This monetization of intellect though has really been weighing us down. J especially has been getting burned out at the constant emergent nature of even his non-clinical job. Everyone wants everything in a hurry and everyone wants the answer they seek even if it’s not correct or in a patient’s best interest. He never has been able to separate his job from the patient at the receiving end, and I love him for being the kind of person who can’t, even in a sea of others who want the easiest way out, or to feed their egos with the most complicated answer instead. He reached a breaking point, and coupled with a new job that he discovered was perhaps handling procedures in a questionable manner, he quit and walked out.
We had discussed his desire to do so, and I knew he needed kind of a moment to reset anyway, so we assessed our finances and decided we could absorb the blow for a little bit. I had been planning to go to work a few months from now anyway when our youngest started Kindergarten. Now this just opened for me up to start looking a little earlier and start polishing the cobwebs off of my resume.
We started looking for new jobs in J’s field immediately, but then a random comment from a friend changed our plans completely and this blog has been reborn.
Months ago, our family had already paid for a trip to Ireland in July for J’s best friend Jon’s wedding. Suddenly we realized that we are now presented with the opportunity to once again have an epic European adventure, but this time with our kids in tow!
I am keeping the old posts I wrote back in 2008, sans kids, to juxtapose against our new explorations as a family of four. If any of you were original readers I’m sure many of you can relate to this new stage in life. We will be endeavoring to do this with just about as much money as we had as a couple, but with all four of us. My hope is that by my own imperfect attempts we can somehow help you feel confident in taking on your own ill-advised but much desired trip, knowing that the imperfections in life are really the ones that stand out most of all in the end.
This Way Maybe 