The call of the not-so wild…

I read two columns recently in nationally syndicated newspapers. One talked about how men quit more easily than women. Another talked about why women were more likely to quit their careers during Covid than men were. I agreed with many points of each and disagreed with just as many others. Me? I’ve got my own theory: it’s the call of not-so wild.

I’m checking out of my heretofore professional life in my late 50s. Studies show that as a woman, I’m right in line with my peers. In my new life, I’m focused on ensuring we get every bit of garden produce we can preserved, giving my formerly feral kitties their best life including daily outdoor time and smoothing the path for my professionally committed husband. It all sounds achingly traditional. It also sounds altogether highly satisfying to me. But if you knew me? Well, you’d likely never use the word “traditional.”

And yet, here I am answering the call of the not-so wild to be a more traditional housewife. But why, after an executive career would I even be interested? Initially, I would have described myself as a tired, frustrated and unmotivated professional. In that case, I could be practicing pure escapism. Certainly, those feelings are in play, but I’m not calling it escapism. While a career in healthcare management served me well for a lot of years, the same stories played out over and over again and became trite after a while. Further, consultants have expiration dates. Every day, new consultants enter the marketplace, full of energy and ideas that I just can’t fake anymore. Turns out, there is a substitute for experience. It’s called enthusiasm and it’s contagious. Unless you’re immune. After repeated exposure, I am immune.

Okay, not completely. I do have energy, enthusiasm and great curiosity still in my life. They are just in that part of my life I’ve never really explored: home life. I remember the song by Reba McIntyre. In, “Is there life out there,” she tells the story of a young woman who had married in her early 20s and had raised a family. Now, she was dreaming of a life outside of her home. Me? I’m her in reverse… and I don’t think I’m alone.

When answering the call of the not-so wild, I think women in particular are looking to get back to a lot of things that matter to themselves and their families. And it’s not just about dusted furniture, manicured lawns and a hot, homemade meal every night – though I’m in favor of all of them. It goes way beyond simple housekeeping and into some fundamental desires: a need for calm and safety at home, reduced overall professional stress on the family unit and a need to reclaim time within the family unit to relate to each other without a set of tasks in the way.

For me, I am still naturally very curious but these days I’m curious about how marshmallows and ketchup get made. While the actual products are more symbolic than the physical, I’m curious about how they – and we – evolved to where we are today. In the case of ketchup and marshmallows, before they were ever in a store, someone had to have a recipe. That recipe required creativity balanced by precision, an attention to detail along with an instinct to innovate and just the tiniest bit of whimsy thrown in. Turns out? Both are relatively easy to make, more tasty when homemade and you likely have most things already in your pantry. And strangely enough, knowing how to make my own now makes me feel just the tiniest bit more independent of the commercial machine. I’m empowered now. There’s nothing the grocery can sell that I can’t make at home. 😊

Still, the call of the not-so wild wasn’t simply about ketchup. I also craved the simplicity of one master. Splitting headspaces between a complex career with make-or-break decisions and the need to create a calm, safe space to land for all of us often left the humans in this family with an empty tank. I had had my day in the sun (and my husband has gotten the opportunity of a lifetime). It simply made sense for me – the fatigued one with a fast-approaching professional expiration date – to change course and make home a priority. Doing so opens up a lot of opportunities for this family. Daily, there’s time to take the boys out for supervised outdoor time and we do have that home-cooked, healthy evening meal. There’s no last-minute run to the grocery store these days and our weekends are largely uncluttered. (We won’t really experience the “unclutteredness” until the garden goes fallow, the leaves are taken care of and we have firewood in, honestly.) This time to just be a family together is genuinely invaluable to me. I love an evening cocktail and conversation with my husband, kitty snuggles in the morning and a set of to-do lists that keep home feeling calm and cozy every day.

Turns out, the call of the not-so wild really is about not accumulating more but appreciating what you have. It’s doing things for yourself. It’s about having enough time every day to be a little bit better version of yourself. It’s having the time to plan a harvest dinner and to execute a retirement-based cash management plan. It’s about Saturday afternoon bike rides with your husband when you would have otherwise been busy mowing. It’s doing your best by those feral kitties who never knew love, good food, clean water, medicine or a safe place to sleep until they trusted you the tiniest little bit.

Ultimately, my verdict is this: women like me don’t leave the workforce because there are too many demands at home or because we are still living some 70s commercial by Enjoli. (“I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let you forget you’re a man, because I’m a woman, Enjoli.”) Instead, some women like me leave not because they’ve lost their curiosity or enthusiasm but because the objects of their curiosity and enthusiasm have changed. I’m not just fascinated by ketchup, marshmallows or my own Korean barbecue sauce. I’m fascinated by the challenge of recreating the simple routines my mom employed to keep our home so calm growing up. I’m curious about how I can help us to economically feel like we have more even without my salary. And I’m enthusiastic about building a life where time is no longer an enemy for any of us.

This call of the not-so wild genuinely feels incredible. While it’s early days yet, I can genuinely say that no decision I’ve ever made outside of marrying my husband has ever felt so easy or so right. In hindsight, I do wonder why I struggled for so long to find this purpose. But now that I have? I am ready to completely enjoy it.