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| Not A Problem |
Six months before I proposed to my wife, she suggested that we do a seminar together. It was the kind of thing that I would never have done on my own, and never did again... but what I got out of it was substantial and lasting, and I still use aspects of what I learned to this day. With the change in both of us, I proposed on Christmas Eve, and we set the date for mid-May.
Our wedding, you will probably not be very surprised to learn, was a festival of marketing, and great humor. We're not formal people, we had a great deal of similar friends and family, and so we had lots of touches like business reply postcards for the invites, logo merchandise, and a themed URL (Wedding Fun Now, Dot Com. No, seriously.) We actually turned a profit on that, and saved the money for a down payment on a house.
Three months after the wedding, we had found a house a few miles away from where I worked. My job was secure, for a business that had been around for half a century... but I got a job offer to join the dot-com economy on the West Coast. My wife gave me the green light to not just put off a home purchase and move, but also drove out with me in a rented U-Haul with our pets and possessions, despite having her own contracting gig that required her to fly back East after the trip. Our lives got even more interesting when, after the flight back, she learned that she was pregnant with our first child. Whom she carried for the first two trimesters, alone, before we were able to reunite.
Six years, three rentals, three start ups and two kids later, she had a fresh network for her business, a deep fondness for the Bay Area... and a husband who had limited prospects for ever affording a house anywhere closer than several hours away from anyone we knew. So she green-lit another big dramatic move, this one landing us halfway between Philadelphia and New York. That was ten years and four start ups ago now, along with the start of my consulting business. (We now own a house, and one of these days, it might even be worth more than we owe on it.)
So what I've become, over the course of my adult life, is a consultant who has been able to learn a ferocious amount from too many start ups in too many consumer categories... because I've had the base and support that's made it all possible. In all of those jobs, I've been able to bring high focus to the work, not just because that's how I'm wired, but because my wife has given me the freedom to do that. Along with the confidence to always know she had my back, and that she trusted me to do what was right, in the long-term, for the family.
It's her birthday today, and what I really wanted to do for her was get her a new car that we've been researching and planning since the start of the year. That plan was compromised by forces beyond our control, a tax bill from several years ago, that exists due to a mistake from an old employer, unrelated to my consulting work. It will likely resolve in our favor, but in case it doesn't, we have to put off the purchase. It's just, honestly, the worst.
Just like 15+ years ago, when we postponed home ownership, she will support a decision that requires faith in her spouse.
And just like then, she'll make me understand, in ways that are simple and profound, why she's the best thing that has ever happened to me.
So, if you want to know how I've managed to keep moving forward, and to always be in a position where I'm learning something new, and striving to be better?
It's because I've got someone who brings that out of me.
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