First, my husband says to me: Christine, you know how you always wanted to live abroad? Let’s do it. So what if your job pays a lot and it’s got lots of fancy perks and everyone says ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ when they see your business cards. You don’t actually like it, and it’s just not worth it. You should just quit.
Me: Really?
And then over many nights and conversations we began to create a plan. We would take our nest egg that we had been setting aside for a new house (we had just recently sold our house in Texas, another long story) and that would be our backup money. He would continue his job as a graphic designer—remotely and I would finally dust off the writing career I had been threatening the world with for most of my adult life (does ANYONE want to read my novel?). We would live beneath our means, and if we decided we hated it we could always come back, we had that option.
It took me 4 weeks to finally say, “yes, let’s do it”.
Eight weeks later, and I’m nearly done hyperventilating.
You see, it’s not about the job, or the money or the stuff. It’s how when you’re 31 and you’ve formed this life and worked very hard on your career, it suddenly becomes part of the fabric of who you are—at least who you think you are. It’s the first thing people ask you (here in the US anyway) when you’re at a party. It’s the way your parents impart the message to their friends and relatives that you are doing well, “Yes, Christine’s a big fancy manager at XXX fancy company”. It even becomes how you talk to yourself, in some ways, when you’re unsure about what you’re doing in life—“at least I’ve done one thing well”.
Now, I was going to take that all away. Willingly amputate a piece of myself, for a whim, for travel, for who even knows—a career as a writer? It seems like the height of indulged American selfishness to demand from the world a career that I like, when I have a perfectly good one already. My internal editor would say, “So what if it you hate it! It pays well, suck it up!”
My internal editor is mean. I’m putting her on notice.
Anyway, I’m coming through to the other side of this decision and realizing how right it feels. As with any big life change, there is always a process of internalizing the decision, of owning it, making it yours. I’m nearly there.
Today: Hell’s yeah baby, I’m going to Europe! (Happy dance ensues…)
Have you ever made a big life change? What was it like?
