Over two years ago when I started this blog, I wanted to catalog my life as I learned to be the new me – a woman who stepped away from a very demanding professional life to instead live out a women’s fiction novel: happy working part-time at a cool job with a great husband, a nice home (in progress) and surrounded by her family and roots. Not much has changed except time.
My journey from there to here literally started five years ago today. It was today that I accepted my current job with my firm – then to work four days per week – and gave the three months’ notice that I was leaving my CEO role. A lot of living has happened between there and here: my mom passed away, three very close family members recovered from cancer diagnoses, we had two weddings, my husband changed jobs and we have largely finished our renovations. Between here and there, I also reduced my part-time status to half-time just over a year ago.
And for a little while, I strayed from sharing my journey. Not that I had stopped living it but more that I was fully immersed in it. The one thing I have discovered as I’ve transitioned totally to a life focused on home and family before work and career is that it is no less busy. Instead, it’s busier in different ways, with some ways being infinitely more rewarding than others. In the end, I’m still surprised that there was this life out there for me to lead and to this day, I am charmed by all of the rewards that taking that nearly impossible step – resigning from my role as a CEO – has afforded me.
But now, I am ready to start sharing again. In some ways, it will be more of the same: identifying those simple pleasures that make life different now. In other ways, I hope this blog lives up more to its promise: shedding light on how to live a more natural and unencumbered lifestyle and sharing the joys of living simply. My hope is that this blog provides inspiration for those like me out there who simply want to know if it’s just as easy as taking the nearest off-ramp on the highway of executive careers and reinventing yourself on a nice quiet street in “Nowheresville”. (Spoiler alert: it is!)
Five years ago, just sending the resignation letter was cataclysmic. I worried for days – sometimes that I wouldn’t get the offer and never be able to resign and other times about the reaction when I did resign. Today, I think of life almost all of the time in terms of balance with family needs coming first. While it happened so slowly, it feels now like the transition is complete. I can still put on that corporate armor and head out on the next flight to do client work when needed, but most of the time? I’ve exchanged suits and heels for t-shirts, shorts and flipflops. My former glass-encased office is now a mix of a home office shared with the furry boys, my living room couch and my outdoor daybed for the days when I want to work outside.
These days, my schedule is as likely to be filled with lawn care and grocery trips as it is zoom calls and proposals. I take pride in making dinner nearly every night from scratch and hopefully with items we grew in our garden. I have at least two important calls to make everyday: to my sisters.
But the absolute biggest change in my life? I form memories now. Sadly, I actually mean that sentence in two ways. When I was working and so distracted all of the time, I went through the motions and didn’t really remember big parts of my life or activities. It took a lot for something to cut through my distraction and make an impression on me. Even when I was off from work, I would be so keyed up from my lifestyle that I didn’t slow my racing thoughts to focus on the moments and that resulted in very few clear memories. Today, I am not so distracted.
The other part of that sentence is quite happy. Beyond conquering my racing thoughts, I can also plan for moments to become memories. My husband’s Ironman? Planned to the ‘T’ to make sure we had the perfect location to set him up for success. The bonus? Recreating a picture from 50 years ago with my sisters. My niece’s wedding? Hours and hours of planning to make sure I had the right flowers for her wedding bouquet. The result? There was something embedded in that bouquet of both of her grandmothers, her grandfather, her husband and herself. She loved it and I got tears in my eyes giving it to her.
Today’s life is what I always wanted my life to be. It’s very quiet and we live simply. Currently, there is hopefully between 75-80 pounds of potatoes in the garden to be dug up and saved for winter. I wouldn’t know what to do if I actually had to buy an onion. I was embarrassed today when I did buy pizza sauce. I have tomato squeezings in the freezer to make sauce but it was going to be too hot to make a big batch and turn on the canner today.
Life today doesn’t revolve around an alarm clock or a morning and evening commute. My one standing appointment every morning is for kitty snacks. In many ways, I can’t really remember my old life as I’ve been living this new one so long now. (Of course, I also wasn’t forming memories. 😊)
Five years on and I am satisfied in ways I never thought possible. I’m content living a life I could only dream of. If you’ve read this far, it is possible. As for me? The next five years will be about truly slowing my life down even more. With renovations nearing completion, we should be able to find an even slower pace to our lives. I’m excited to see what this new journey will bring.
The Yuppie Homesteader 