I can’t believe it’s been three years since my last blog post. What was meant to be a temporary pause just never got picked up again as life changes started happening. As you can imagine, we (and our house) are in a totally different season of life today. There have been tremendous highs and devastating lows, feelings of excitement and fear, and a sense of achievement and defeat in all areas of our life; family, career, home renovations, you name it. You can’t plan life and it’s never an easy or straight forward road to get where you want to go. There are plenty of obstacles you have to navigate through and experiences you learn from that, hopefully, help you with the next phase of life coming your way.
It’s been three years since I landed a job you could say I had worked my whole career towards (it was probably what my twenty something self had in mind for herself) and we started our basement renovation. It’s been two years since we lost my amazing father-in-law Bob far too young to lung cancer and finished renovating our kitchen, living room, and mudroom. It’s been one year since we brought our son Jacob home and finished our hall bathroom and nursery renovations. It’s been 6 months since I was let go from that “career goal” job and have been transitioning into a new phase of my life. A phase that I had always imagined living in some way, shape, or form but it was always “down the road” or “a few years away” and never “today”. I have no doubt that fear kept me from taking a leap into “the unknown”, since in general I’m a person who likes to have a plan and is fairly practical about big life decisions. A steady pay check offered security and covered the practical things in life that we need, which is just the reality of being an adult unfortunately. I wasn’t prepared to lose my job but restructuring was a common thing at the company so I also wasn’t too surprised that it happened again. After the initial anxious feelings passed that day, they were quickly replaced with new feelings of excitement, and honestly some relief. Being a working mom is frickin’ HARD!! Especially with a long commute, demanding workload, the physical demands of breastfeeding, and a spouse who also has a demanding career… it was manageable but also intense. As much as I enjoyed getting a break from baby stuff, interacting with co-workers, and having projects to work on, the thought of spending more time with my 6 month old, who was becoming so much for fun, pulled at my heart strings and was quickly followed by the thought that now was my chance to make a change. So while the decision to leave at that time wasn’t mine, the decision not to pursue another position in the corporate world right now was mine… well jointly made with Mace of course. It was a pretty easy decision for us to make because everything we’ve gone through over the last three years has impacted our outlook on life and how we want to live it. We don’t have everything figured out and there has been/still is a huge adjustment to our roles and lifestyle now but I think we’d both agree that we’re really enjoying this time of change for our family. A lot of stress has been reduced however there is still stress, its just a different kind now. There are still times we both question the decision for me to not work full time outside the home and I seriously wonder what our outlook will be like in another five years but I doubt I will ever regret spending this time with Jacob.
So that brings us to today, which coincidentally was my first day working in a design related role! And I had SO MUCH FUN!!! It wasn’t super glamorous and was a lot of grunt work but I felt very rewarded at the end of the day and loved seeing a tangible result. I mentioned always envisioning this change so in essence, I’ve been some what building a plan in my head for years and have spent the last 6 months slowly putting the plan into action. What is this new job/path I’m on? Well I’m working with a local home stager who also does some renovation and interior design work and will be helping her out with various projects from time to time. I’ve also got some other ideas in the works on how to gain more design experience but since my real full time job is making sure Jacob is learning, exploring, and growing into a happy and healthy human being it might take a little bit more time. But I’m planning to share all of those experiences and all of our home renovations here on the blog. So that’s the update on what’s been happening at Abode №. 9! Hope you enjoy following us on this new journey!
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