Changes

You can’t expect to see change if you never do anything differently. -Meg Biram

I made a big change recently.

I got a job. Like a regular (mostly) job with benefits… and vacation time… and a desk. It’s weird having a desk, to be honest.

For about a year, I’ve been feeling like something needed to change. Our lives completely changed first when we had a baby including our family priorities, financial goals, and my mind. My brain literally changed. You might think that having a baby would make a person want to slow down, but no. Having a baby made me wired to accomplish a lot. I became crazy about achieving goals and finding more efficiencies in home and work life.

In fact, maybe we got so efficient and introspecitve that I realized I had a lot more free time on my hands than I wanted. I’m able to accomplish most of my alder|creative work in under a single day per week. So, what does that leave me with?

A whole lot of time to drive myself crazy with too many ideas that I don’t have the capacity to fully launch, but instead drag on for too long.

Another priority we have is becoming debt free. It’s been a struggle since we have been completely self-employed for the past 5 years. With that comes ups and downs in income. Plus, having a baby slowed down our payoff plans and, while we have made major strides, the biggest debt beasts are still roaring at us (hello, student loans).

My hyper-efficient brain realized something. If one of us got a job, the other one could still run the business (structured differently depending on who started working) with an assistant, maximizing our income for the short to medium term and helping us achieve goals AND get a little psychological boost because we’d have a “reliable” income. Meaning, we can also re-invest back into the business in order to grow in the long-run.

As it turned out, while Eric was the first to apply for jobs, a position popped up that was probably the most perfect job there could ever have been for me. So perfect, in fact, that I was able to negotiate partially working from home which helped ease the burden on our family time and the expenses of commuting.

And so far, it’s been a challenge but also great. I enjoy working, to be honest. Whether it’s for myself or for someone else… as long as I’m able to do something well, I’m ok with getting up early on a Monday morning. And even thought there are moments where I think to myself “what have I done?!” I realize that I’ve made a change… and that’s enough. Because to do the same thing forever and expect different results is crazy. We want to make the jump to the next level and hopefully this challenge will get us there!