In a Truth-Blown Gutter Full of Wasted Years, Like Blown-Out Speakers Ringin’ in My Ears
Ok, I know that I've been slacking on my posts lately. I was in and out most of last week doing some business travel, and then I was at home watching a sick little one. On top of that, things have been crazy around here lately since our customer's end of fiscal year is on Sept 30th, so everyone is trying to cram in orders to make sure that they come in over budget so they can get even more funds next year. But excuses are just excuses. A writer writes, so here I go...
A week ago today I flew in to our company headquarters. Actually, it is just one building in the corporate HQ nexus, but still it is part of our corporate offices (as opposed to a branch office like Denver). I check in there every few months because that's where my boss(es), and co-workers reside. I should be there, too, but I have a special arrangement with the Big Boss Lady and local management that allows me to work out of the local office here in Denver. This has its pros and cons, but overall it works out well.
However, every time I travel there I get the same question over and over: When are you moving to ____? I hear it from VPs, directors, sales reps, CSRs, administrators, and other finance people in and out of my own department. I mean everybody. I've been told that the VP of Treasury said that he would do "whatever it takes" to get me to move there. I have a position waiting for me and all I have to do is say the word...
But I don't want to say the word. I don't want to move. It is hard to explain but it is actually more than that. My overall happiness is intrinsically tied to being here in Colorado. I know my wife feels the same way. We can't move without sacrificing this emotional serenity.
Sure, a lot of people like or even love where they live. But this is different. I belong here. I knew that I belonged here when I first traveled out west with my family when I was 10 years old. The first time I saw the mountains I immediately knew that I was going to live here someday (my parents will vouch for this sentiment). For the next 11 years I continued to be drawn to this place, with several backpacking trips to help solidify this desire. When my girlfriend and I decided that we had to escape the downward spiral that threatened to consume us in Wisconsin, the time had come to fulfill what I had foreseen over a decade earlier. We quit our jobs, left school, and headed to Fort Collins with everything we owned in a tiny U-Haul trailer.
We loved living here. We were married here. We both finished school here (well, our first degrees). Both of our daughters were born here. We bought our first house here. We love the community, the area, and of course, the unbelievable scenic beauty. This has been more than the town in which we live. This is the town in which we have LIVED.
Times weren't always so good for us, however. Our young family was hit particularly hard by the economic downturn. With both of us out of full time work with a mortgage to pay and two small mouths to feed, we became desperate. There was no work for us (or a whole lot of other people) here in Colorado so we decided to leave the place that we loved so much so I could take a job in Minnesota. That decision turned out to be a total disaster. Although my job was going well, six months later we were paying rent on a cramped two-bedroom apartment while still paying a mortgage on an empty house in Colorado (no one’s buying when no one’s working). We hated the weather, we hated the rudeness of the local people, and we hated that we lived in a place that we hated. With our finances strapped, we couldn't even do anything but sit in our apartment and slip back into that all-to-familiar downward spiral that would have surely consumed us once more if things didn't change. That xmas we decided that we were moving back no matter what. I would be leaving a good job, but what's the point of having a good job when everything else around you is falling to pieces?
We moved back that following July. I remember seeing the mountains the first time after that year of being gone. I remember quite vividly the literal feeling of a fog being lifted and of black clouds clearing out of my head. We were still on the interstate leaving a good job and angry family and heading towards complete uncertainty but I knew we had made the right choice. It was then that we decided that we would never leave again. We would never take for granted the happiness that this place brings us. In my lifetime I have lived in states all over this country and have traveled to even more. Although I've seen some pretty nice places, there has never been any place that I have ever been that I would want to live in more.
So, as I was sitting in the finance director's office discussing some continuing education classes that I am taking next month, he tells me that if I am interested he will approve full-on college courses in these subject areas because he wants to groom me to be the next "CK." CK is your typical company success story. He started out as a low-level A/R guy (like me) then he learned a bunch of fancy programming tricks which pretty much sling-shot him WAY UP the company ladder into senior treasury management. Now admittedly that got me all tingly because who wouldn't want to hear that they could be groomed for a top-level position with a 9th-floor office literally adjacent to the CEO, CFO, the VP of Treasury and a handful of other executives? I mean, even if things didn't pan out near as well for me as for CK, one has to at least consider why he or she is being invested in. If this is hypothetically all prerequisite for a big job offer in the corporate HQ, the question returns to the subject of relocation. I have held out from moving thus far for mid-level jobs, but what if a huge opportunity came up? Would it ever be worth moving from the place that I love and belong for a huge career opportunity and material gain?
At what price would you sell your happiness?
A week ago today I flew in to our company headquarters. Actually, it is just one building in the corporate HQ nexus, but still it is part of our corporate offices (as opposed to a branch office like Denver). I check in there every few months because that's where my boss(es), and co-workers reside. I should be there, too, but I have a special arrangement with the Big Boss Lady and local management that allows me to work out of the local office here in Denver. This has its pros and cons, but overall it works out well.
However, every time I travel there I get the same question over and over: When are you moving to ____? I hear it from VPs, directors, sales reps, CSRs, administrators, and other finance people in and out of my own department. I mean everybody. I've been told that the VP of Treasury said that he would do "whatever it takes" to get me to move there. I have a position waiting for me and all I have to do is say the word...
But I don't want to say the word. I don't want to move. It is hard to explain but it is actually more than that. My overall happiness is intrinsically tied to being here in Colorado. I know my wife feels the same way. We can't move without sacrificing this emotional serenity.
Sure, a lot of people like or even love where they live. But this is different. I belong here. I knew that I belonged here when I first traveled out west with my family when I was 10 years old. The first time I saw the mountains I immediately knew that I was going to live here someday (my parents will vouch for this sentiment). For the next 11 years I continued to be drawn to this place, with several backpacking trips to help solidify this desire. When my girlfriend and I decided that we had to escape the downward spiral that threatened to consume us in Wisconsin, the time had come to fulfill what I had foreseen over a decade earlier. We quit our jobs, left school, and headed to Fort Collins with everything we owned in a tiny U-Haul trailer.
We loved living here. We were married here. We both finished school here (well, our first degrees). Both of our daughters were born here. We bought our first house here. We love the community, the area, and of course, the unbelievable scenic beauty. This has been more than the town in which we live. This is the town in which we have LIVED.
Times weren't always so good for us, however. Our young family was hit particularly hard by the economic downturn. With both of us out of full time work with a mortgage to pay and two small mouths to feed, we became desperate. There was no work for us (or a whole lot of other people) here in Colorado so we decided to leave the place that we loved so much so I could take a job in Minnesota. That decision turned out to be a total disaster. Although my job was going well, six months later we were paying rent on a cramped two-bedroom apartment while still paying a mortgage on an empty house in Colorado (no one’s buying when no one’s working). We hated the weather, we hated the rudeness of the local people, and we hated that we lived in a place that we hated. With our finances strapped, we couldn't even do anything but sit in our apartment and slip back into that all-to-familiar downward spiral that would have surely consumed us once more if things didn't change. That xmas we decided that we were moving back no matter what. I would be leaving a good job, but what's the point of having a good job when everything else around you is falling to pieces?
We moved back that following July. I remember seeing the mountains the first time after that year of being gone. I remember quite vividly the literal feeling of a fog being lifted and of black clouds clearing out of my head. We were still on the interstate leaving a good job and angry family and heading towards complete uncertainty but I knew we had made the right choice. It was then that we decided that we would never leave again. We would never take for granted the happiness that this place brings us. In my lifetime I have lived in states all over this country and have traveled to even more. Although I've seen some pretty nice places, there has never been any place that I have ever been that I would want to live in more.
So, as I was sitting in the finance director's office discussing some continuing education classes that I am taking next month, he tells me that if I am interested he will approve full-on college courses in these subject areas because he wants to groom me to be the next "CK." CK is your typical company success story. He started out as a low-level A/R guy (like me) then he learned a bunch of fancy programming tricks which pretty much sling-shot him WAY UP the company ladder into senior treasury management. Now admittedly that got me all tingly because who wouldn't want to hear that they could be groomed for a top-level position with a 9th-floor office literally adjacent to the CEO, CFO, the VP of Treasury and a handful of other executives? I mean, even if things didn't pan out near as well for me as for CK, one has to at least consider why he or she is being invested in. If this is hypothetically all prerequisite for a big job offer in the corporate HQ, the question returns to the subject of relocation. I have held out from moving thus far for mid-level jobs, but what if a huge opportunity came up? Would it ever be worth moving from the place that I love and belong for a huge career opportunity and material gain?
At what price would you sell your happiness?
posted by john at 12:27 PM
2 Comments:
I've made sacrifices in a similar manner. I'm a city girl through and through. A city makes me happy. I miss Toronto nearly daily. But I guess I looked at this differently... it's not really the cost of happiness, but learning to make a particular situation happier than comes naturally. I would have initially said that I surrendered my happiness for a good job and for my husband's. IT took years to look at it differently and to begin to be willing to WORK at being happy with different things. Initially, I paid for the job switch with my happiness. Over time, I earned my happiness in a difficult environment...
But I definitely know what you must have been feeling. You have made the right decision because you felt it. Stick with your guts. But don't necessarily think that you couldn't be happy in a different situation, a different environment. The human will is a strong thing. You can be happy with anything if you allow yourself and work at it a bit (or a lot, in some cases).
I agree with you for the most part, SLG. My parents moved several times during my younger years, the worst being a move from Tennessee to Minnesota when I was in high school (talk about a culture shock). At the time I hated them for it since I had an established comfortibility and network of friends, but in hindsight it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me. I made much better friends (considering that most of my acquaintances in Tennessee were juvenile delinquents who pretty much all got arrested the last day I was there. The cops' advice to me: don't leave town. I was on a plane to Minnesota 3 hours later...) and I eventually met my future wife there. Plus, being removed from the southern US, I can now view it objectively and realize that my current beliefs are vastly different than the general perspective of that area. On the other hand, who I am and what I identify with aligns very closely with the area in which I currently reside. I am proud to live here. I don't know if I could say that about any other place in which I've lived. That is a big part of the "sense of belonging" that I related to in my post. Everywhere else I felt like a square peg. Here, I fit into the slot perfectly. I agree that it is not impossible to find happiness in an otherwise undesireable situation, but the question I ask myself is if the other, unknown happiness is better than the happiness that I already know? When testing this query before, the answer has always ended up in a resounding "no." No amount of gain has ever been worth the sacrifice. Hey, at least I took the chance to find out, though.
My wife read this post and at dinner that night she reiterated that she would never, ever leave Colorado again no matter how much money they offered me to move. So, if she's not going, neither am I. That for sure is a happiness that I would never sacrifice at any price.
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