When my wife and I married I was working at a bank.
It wasn’t related to my degree nor was it well-paying. It was a job that allowed me to work part-time while I went to seminary and then after finishing my first semester in seminary, it allowed me to go full-time when I realized seminary wasn’t for me.
A year and a half later, when my wife graduated college, I told her that since I was at a bank and they have banks everywhere, wherever she got a teaching job, we would move there.
After being married for less than three months, we moved from PA to MD since she was offered a math teaching position at one of the local high schools.
We packed our bags and moved.
After a few years of being in an apartment, we decided that we needed to get a house. Because neither of us wanted to be neighbors with one of her students, we bought in of development because it was NOT in her school district and because it provided quick access to the main roads I needed to get to my job.
After we started a family, she stayed home to raise our daughters. We knew that this was her desire so the house we bought needed to be affordable on one salary, mine. So that is what we did.
Now 18+ years in the house, we run our businesses from it; her as a full-time math tutor and me as a web designer.
Work Driving Decisions?
The decisions my wife and I made were driven by what our jobs paid and where they were.
We moved states, because of a job.
When we bought our house, we did so because of what we could afford on my job’s pay and what was not in her school district.
Our jobs were dictating where we lived, what we could afford, and other decisions, like staying home to raise our own kids.
What about you?
Have you moved states or towns for a job? Or did you turn them down because you wanted to stay where you are?
I am reminded of the story Dan Miller of 48days.com tells.
He and his wife Joann moved to California for a job. They spent the majority of their weekends going to the mountains.
Eventually, they realized that they wanted to live somewhere that had four seasons and wasn’t too hot or too cold.
They wanted to live in a goldilocks environment. They researched (pre-internet) places in the U.S. that meet their criteria. They then moved to the outside of Nashville TN.
Their desire for the environment in which to raise their three children drove them literally 2/3 of the way across the country.
Defining What You Want
I am of the belief that we should be the ones defining the life we want to have and not letting our jobs dictate where we live or when we vacation.
We need to have a life that we want, assuming that life is in accordance with God’s will for our lives.
I am convinced that many people, myself included, stay in jobs they hate to have the “life they want.”
Many people work so hard to have the life they want that they don’t have time to live life.
This doesn’t need to be the case.
Determine what YOU want.
Not what your parents want you to do or have.
Not what you need to do to keep up with the Joneses.
Not what tricky marketers tell you that you need.
Make the choice to plan out what you want.
Strip away what society tells you what will make you happy or content and listen to that voice inside that is longing to be heard.
