Have you ever been driving somewhere, change your mind or take a weird detour you weren’t expecting, but then end up where you were headed all along?
Maybe that doesn’t make sense.
Four years ago this week, I was offered a pretty significant promotion with my (then current) company. It would’ve been huge for my career, but I would’ve had to move to Upstate NY. This wasn’t exactly the end of the world. I spent 6 months working out of that office while someone was on leave, and made friends in the area. I was on a kickball team, and people who only knew me for a few weeks threw me a surprise birthday party. While the winters were worse than Connecticut, summers in Upstate NY are one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen. Plus, Fingerlakes Wineries. However, it was a 6 hour drive from my family in NYC, and no direct flights back to California. Plus, did I mention the winters?
On the other hand, taking the job would mean leaving R. We had been together for 2 years at that point, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to leave him. I also wasn’t sure I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. The one thing I knew for sure was I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in Connecticut.
I figured my plan would go like this: take the promotion, spend 3-5 years getting killer experience, use new experience to find a job back in California.
But R had other plans. On July 3, he begged me not to take the job, proposed marriage, told me we’d be together forever.
I turned down the job to stay with him.
His parents didn’t approve. We broke up. I slept in my car for a while. We got back together.
But in another sense, maybe it all fell together.
In my mind, taking the promotion was a temporary means of escape. I’d work in Syracuse for 3-5 years, gaining enough experience to get a job in Los Angeles or Orange County.
And here I am, 3-5 years later, working in the exact job I would’ve been working towards, and I never had to endure an Upstate NY winter.
Life is so weird, right? It is so good to be home.
oranges to apples 