As my regular reader(s) know, it’s not very often that I delve into my personal life or the personal details of my family. (I’m no Don Draper, but I do like to maintain some privacy in the midst of having so much of me out and about on the web.) But this morning I had one of those moments that was difficult for me emotionally..and a reminder of where my priorties should be.
Today was the first day of school/daycare for Andrew and Gracie.
That in itself shouldn’t be the cause for a major headline on this blog. But how we got to this point has been a year-long odyssey of adventure, disappointment, surrender, coping, re-evaluation and renewal.
In my last gig, I admittedly put way too much on the table. I allowed the balance between my work life and my home life to blur into an indistinguishable mess — too many long hours, too many business trips, too much time coming home and getting right back to work. The ultimate came in July of last year and involved me convincing my wife to want to move to Miami for a year and a half for the sake of working out of my current client’s office, which would mean selling our home and moving away from all of our family and friends. It also meant that the missus would have to walk away from her beloved teaching gig of the past 6 years. While we discussed the decision thoroughly and agreed to take the leap together, I knew she was doing it for me and for the potential benefit it would give to my career. We knew it wouldn’t be easy or forever, so we chalked it up to the grand adventure of life.
One week before the moving truck was to back up to our home, mid-October or so by this point, my client informed the agency that they were changing the nature of the relationship and that business would soon be going out the door to one of our partner agencies for the account…and the immediate decision was to cancel our relocation. Thankfully we hadn’t sold the house, but the missus had resigned her contract and the chances of getting another job in the middle of a school year was slim to none. Substitute teaching wouldn’t offset the cost of daycare for the kids either. We were certainly disappointed by what happened — pissed off is more like it – and it didn’t take long to figure out that my agency was only going to go so far in terms helping compensate for the fact that my wife was now unhappily unemployed.
The reality check for me was the realization that I had invested so much into my client and my agency that I had simultaneously screwed up things on the home front pretty good. And in that moment, I vowed “never again.” The situation at my old agency wasn’t conducive to me making a radical change or course correction in terms of re-establishing balance, so the first priority was finding a new and better situation, which has happened beautifully. I love the new gig, which is actually a return to my very first agency.
Meanwhile, the missus has had a much tougher road, spending the last year as a stay-at-home mom. But again, she’s done a remarkable job in landing a new and exciting teaching gig at the same time as preparing the kids educationally as their first true “teacher” when it comes to early childhood curriculum. I will never, ever cease to be amazed by my spouse for her resilency, her creativty or her passion. It’s why I fell in love with her 12 years ago and it’s also what makes her an amazing mom today.
So this morning was Sarah’s first official day on her new teaching contract and the official first day of school for the kids. It was hard for us to say goodbye this morning, though the kids were off and running and playing before we even left the room. To me, I think that means we’ve done a good job of picking a safe place for them to be. I think it also means that they’re ready for their new adventure.
But in the midst of this, I’m not going to forget the lesson I’ve learned here. And I believe my story is only one out of thousands when it comes to this crazy little biz called advertising. Behind every pitch, every review, every layoff, every account won or lost, there is a human story.
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Excellent post, and a great reminder to everyone in the biz to make sure to double check their priorities on a regular basis.
As you showed in this post as well as your linked post, you can get caught up in the middle of it all and not see precisely where you’re heading until its too late and you’ve got a mess on your hands.
Great to see that the long road had a happy destination all around!
Experience tells me that this is not the last time that priorities will be checked. I recall a time, about 28 years ago, that my wife and I decided that “stay-at-home-mom” was no longer the best path with two older children around 12 and 10 and a very precocious 3-year old.
It became a mix of “latch-key” and “day-care” followed by a number of subsequent school and career choices as the years went on. Most of those were a mixture of how we lived, where we lived and what we valued. There was a mixture of good, and not so good, short term outcomes.
It’s a swinging pendulum that never seems to remain in an ideal state of balance. Stay flexible and don’t be too hard on yourself for taking a chance.
It all seems to work out in the end… :-)}
@Jeremy: Eyes on the road, two hands on the wheel.
@Dad: A lesson learned is always a good thing. A lesson ignored is not. And the lesson learned isn’t “don’t take risks,” but rather “understand what you’re risking.”