When Your Pivot Turns Into A Lindy Routine

I am a big fan of pivots. Changing your current direction in order to continue, and more effectively, work towards your goals.

But what happens when one pivot leads to another which leads to another, which leaves you sashaying through your year?

That has been the last 12 months for us.

It started with failed potty training. Then a reorganization at Paul’s employer. Then kept building with a summer of mismatched schedules. A new opportunity for growth in my career. The realization of just how fast our kids are growing up. A two-year timeline until our oldest starts school (which is, in itself, a pivot and a new speed of life) An evaluation of what’s really important to us. Questioning if those values are achievable where we are currently living.

The result? We’re moving.

Where? We don’t know.

For the last 10 years, Paul and I have been trying to work out leaving Southern California. We want to live somewhere more green. I love rainy summer days. Paul wants to be out in nature more. We want to be some place simpler, with more space. We want to escape being landlocked by traffic.

When I joined Automattic, I told Paul that we could move anywhere that met three criteria:

Within an hour drive of a city. I am an urban kid at heart. I want to be able to drive into an urban center for a day and get my fix.
Within an hour drive of a major airport. We love to travel. I also have to travel a few times a year for work. I don’t want to add extra time just getting to and from the airport.
Have a significant body of water. I love the ocean, but lakes and rivers also meet the criteria.

So at the end of last summer, with everything spinning around us, we began to explore the option of leaving California. The conclusion we came to was that we needed to spend time exploring other parts of the United States.

So we did a thing…

Couple standing in front of a Shockwave Fifth wheel toy hauler trailer and white truck

We bought a fifth wheel trailer four days after New Years. Our home sold three months later. Our belongings have been divided into trailer, storage, and go away. We have booked our route as far as Texas and hit the road in a week. We are hoping to find a place to settle down before the two-year timeline runs out.

Burning, sorting, patching; all part of the process in a transition of this scale.

It’s been a whirlwind. There have been stressful and exhausting days as well as exuberant hopes. The kiddos have been champs at dealing with the onslaught of transition we have thrown at them over the last six months. Paul has stepped up to the role of full-time dad. I will continue working as we adventure east.

My parents have kindly let us live in their driveway for the last four weeks as we complete final preparations. It’s a bittersweet experience. Capturing as much time together as possible. I keep looking around at the litter of loss. The toys that will be left behind to get packed up. The scribbles on the wall. The precursors to the ache which is waiting for us. The reminders that we were there, and now we’re not.

There is much we will miss about Southern California. Our families and friends top the list. The option to attend Sandals in person. The way the hills look after a heavy rain. The sound of the Pacific on a summer day. Mexican food. Kaiser Insurance. Orange poppies and the blossoming fruit of the orange groves. There is so much to be grateful for. So much that we have been able to experience as we both grew up here.

At the same time, there are some challenges that have been hitting our state hard. Addiction and mental health issues have caused a huge rise in homelessness. There is a water crisis. Inflation, which I know is bad everywhere, has been extremely hard in a high-cost area. We want so much more for our family than fleeing politics and expense, because we know those are everywhere, but politics and expense can’t be ignored. Twenty years ago, I would have donned a cape; fought the good fight.

Motherhood changes how you define what a good fight is.

For me, a good fight is giving these two little wonders a chance to have time with their parents. To experience something other than the rush of wake-up, day care, stressed parents, dinner, and bed. Exposing them to the world in a way that is more slow and safe than the pace we currently have. Offering them my attention, not my exhaustion. Introducing them to Jesus. Parenting gently. Teaching by doing together. Being a better and healthier version of myself. Loving their father in a way that makes them feel safe.

For Paul and I, I hope that we laugh together more. I am looking forward to snuggles by a campfire. To remembering how to talk about anything other than chores, bills, and kids. That we can get back to being best friends rather than project managers.

For me, this is a chance to pilgrimage back to who I used to be. I want to find that girl and bring her along for the journey to the woman I need to be.

Adventure on.

Forgetting where things go

Texture of Travel: November 2022

My family recently took a 20+ day adventure in Europe. Here are some of the textures that I caught during our travels.

Progress is messy.

Right now, my living room looks like a baby GAP threw up in it.

It has for a week.

Using this GIF because I do not want to post a picture of my living room. 🙂

I started a project to clean out and organize our closets. As part of that project, I washed all the laundry and plopped it on our coach. I dragged all the clothes that my kids have outgrown and put them in trash bags in the entryway (so I remember to take them…somewhere). I am also sorting through the mountain of clothes that my kids are growing into, so their closets are updated. I don’t want to accidentally buy the same thing twice again (yes, it has happened).

This is a whole day project in the best of times. Between work, family obligations, and health issues, this has turned into a two-week project.

My living room has been in this chaos for two weeks. I hate it. My husband hates it. The dog loves it. There are, after all, extra snuggies on the coach.

The most frustrating part is the mess. It feels like the more progress I make, the messier the living room gets.

This week, I had to take a breath and remind myself that it’s okay, because progress is messy.

Want to get rid of the junk in your trunk? You have to drag it all out.

Want to learn a new skill? Prepare to tear your hair out, have notes, and learning things, and mental models, and mess everywhere.

Want to heal from your childhood trauma? Bad relationship? That mental health issue that has plagued you since you were a teen? Prepare for a snot-nosed, emotional mess.

The good news is that the mess doesn’t have to stay. It can get cleaned up, picked up again, and put back in order.

The process of progress, though, it is a messy one.

I’m not a Karen; I just had a bad morning

I didn’t sleep much. The baby was up most of the night. I got about 90 minutes of actual rest in the early dawn.

This morning was a blur of busyness. Getting diaper bags packed and ready for the kids so they could go to their caregiver for the day. We walk to the park in the mornings and we were running half an hour late, which meant being late getting back and likely no breakfast or shower for me, which was going to throw off many of my other plans for the day. I’ve already yelled at the dog. I’m mulling over my failings as a mom and wife. I try to rush through our walk to the park while also trying to problem solve our evening routine so morning would be less chaotic. I walk my kids to the park for my own mental health. I am sure you can imagine, this morning it isn’t quite hitting the mark. Like we’re missing the mark by a football field.

My son is a toddler who is very curious about the world. He loves to push the button at the crosswalk. He pushes. We cross.

When I turn around, he has run back to the button on the side of the street we just crossed to, ie new button. He is standing on the sidewalk by the light, pushing the button. This is one of those crosswalk lights that is just a warning that someone might cross and doesn’t have an actual stoplight or stop sign to it. If there isn’t a warning light flashing, drivers can continue down the street without a stop.

I am trying to get my son to come back to me when I notice a car stoped at the crosswalk. The driver is now furiously motioning at me. I am sure they are yelling too, which I can’t hear because they are in their car.

Here’s the thing. Now, I can see the situation from both sides. The driver probably had important places to be and this delay isn’t helping. They’re probably watching me and thinking what a crap mom I am for letting my son run back towards the street. That I should be paying better attention. They’re probably thinking what a clueless mess I am. Which I feel like anyways.

However, in the moment, their anger distracts me from the important figure; my son. Instead of calmly walking over to him and taking his hand, I lose what little grasp I still had on my cool. Now I am yelling at the driver rather than collecting the wandering toddler. My son eventually finishes pressing the crosswalk button and resumes his walk towards me. The driver speeds off, furious.

And the world has two more angry people in it.

Did I mention that I am a middle aged white woman and the driver was a middle aged black woman?

It would be so easy to turn this situation into a racial problem. That I was a self-entitled Karen who expected the world to cater to her. That the driver was a loud angry black woman who should mind her own business. But it doesn’t need to be that.

The reality was, the driver had a right to be concerned. My son could have easily run in front of their car. I should have paid more attention and stopped him. Or at the very least, anticipated his move and walk him to the crosswalk button safely.

On the other hand, I could have used a little mercy in that moment. I had a cranky infant strapped to my chest and a dog on a leash in my hand. I had very dutifully held my son’s hand as I crossed the street and was in the process of collecting him when I saw the driver.

I share this not to be blind to the impact of race on our experiences, but to highlight that sometimes a bad interaction is just that, a bad interaction. Two people who caught each other at the wrong moment.

So to the driver who stopped at the crosswalk for my son, thank you for stopping. This day could have been so much worse. I am sorry that we took up your time, and for losing my cool.

Maybe one day we will see each other in a better moment.