Category Archives: Career

Career

Just Over 100 Days Until TBD Life

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For everything there is a season. And life constantly changes even if you try by lack of effort or relentless force to keep it all standing still. My fears compel me both to action and inaction, but things are in constant motion around me. My children are growing up a little each day. Work, in the great resignation with a tinge of additional leadership sociopathy, is hemorrhaging talent. And I’m leaning more into leaning out while leaning sideways in still looking for what the hell it is that might make me feel like I have purpose again. In no particular order.

I recently found out, through probably the wrong channels, that a key person in my org is leaving the company. I can’t say I’m surprised, but I’m hurt by not finding out directly from this person. It just shows again how little I matter in this organization — and how others have managed to move up and gain prominence as I’ve fallen. I’m not jealous or even bitter anymore. Just questioning if I can ever function in a place like this. How can I go somewhere else and be them and move upwards instead of down? Is that even possible? I mean, after a series of wins and not rocking the boat I failed on some very basic task requiring follow through on booking a space with someone who told me they would do it and never did. So I’m ashamed about that and back to questioning my abilities and where I can actually be successful when my mind is extra mush as parent to two including one with ‘special needs’ and my own special needs and my own needs to be special.

I’ve updated my LinkedIn. Again. For like, the 90th time this year. My last updated was a mass deletion of all the details under each job description because reading it late one night it itched me with all its horrific bullshittery. I revisited it and inputed words that aren’t bothering me much now and turned on “open to new opportunities from recruiters” because right now I’m on that 100 day stretch and given I’m knee-deep in high-profile projects and the key lead in my department has decided to walk — and I was told by the head of my department I’m “definitely not a 2/5” this year (which I think was supposed to be a compliment as well as some sort of assurance that I’m valued still?) I’m less concerned about getting let go in the near future. I’m more concerned about jumping too soon to the wrong thing or just staying because I’m too scared to let go of my solid 3/5 lifestyle that’s stressful but a known evil vs walking into something totally new and that grass might be dry dirt but the time I get to it.

But seeing this person leave the company is a solid reminder that things are just upside down here and it’s not just me even though just me is an issue as well. The level of sexism and sociopathy is higher than I realized early on and those in executive roles feel it most. I don’t know what is said behind closed doors but if my limited interaction with said leaders is any sign of it then it’s real bad. Impossible expectations paired with questionable judgement means that even the most capable must resolve to lower themselves to be clearly submissive yet is paired with a lacking of respect for anyone who happens to be female especially in a non technical role. It’s pretty upsetting to the point that I see even if I never had my own challenges with project management and communication I still would be looking for an escape hatch.

The leaving of this member of the team is a lot process. I’ve been held back in many ways due to this person but I don’t blame them for the decisions they’ve made to not provide support. But I also don’t think they ever really understood or valued what I bring to the table and in some ways purposely kept me out of projects where I could have added value because they don’t like me personally. I feel like this person really had a clear set of objectives for what to accomplish in this role and I do hope they’ve accomplished everything they set out to do. I get a sense that leaving was not a given but the torture of being constantly berated despite barely sleeping and working constantly with pretty much no vacation for many years straight–and not being able to keep the best members on a team because they quickly see how dysfunctional this place is — finally was too much.

But I fucked up my relationship with this person time and again to the point that it is irreparable so if I do decide to stay at this org getting a clean slate with someone new also changes my own trajectory a bit. I’m mildly hurt that I’m in the dark on all this while my colleague who stepped into my former role is interviewing potential replacements for this person, but I’m trying to not take it personally. Only factually as another proof point that I really don’t matter here and I never will. The head of the department is clearly concerned about hemorrhaging people so suddenly he has told me that I’m a valued member of the team and will be considered for refresh etc, but to me it’s just too little too late, and knowing what I know now about what’s actually going down (I didn’t have the context when we met earlier this week) I just feel like my time at this org is worth nothing and I’m living in my box with no opportunity for growth. I asked about managing a team and was pretty clearly told that’s not going to happen so that’s that. Of course I can’t actually get a role where I lead a team without team lead experience so who knows if I’ll ever make that transition. And all the jobs that pay decently outside of this one still seem to require team leadership experience. So I’m still feeling stuck. But I’m starting to transition to applying elsewhere. I’ll start having some conversations. I’ll see if anyone is interested in me. Get a sense for what I’m worth since I still feel so worthless. And who knows what next year holds but I do feel ready for a change. I guess. Not rushing out the door but certainly all my toes on one entire foot are wiggling freely on the other side.

 

 

Aging, Anxiety, Career, Depression, Married Life, Mental Illness

So Long 37.

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37. You’ve been… a year. Saying goodbye to 37 seems like closing the doors on an era. An era of grasping on to the last remnants of my fleeting youth that in actuality was gone long ago. I don’t know what it is about “38” because it’s still squarely in one’s 30s, but it feels so close to 40 it might as well be. And my husband is turning 40 early next year, so I feel whoever gets there first ages both partners in a marriage to the next official decade of life.

The last few years of my 30s may or may not include one more child, but I’m really torn on that for so many reasons. More on that in a bit. It likely will include changing jobs, because this one is getting worse and worse by the day and the compensation next year no longer makes it worth while to stay. I just feel like no matter what I do I am not capable of doing a good job in this role. I’m not sure where I am capable of doing a good job but it’s certainly not here. I’m not getting fired so I’m clearly not doing the worst job possible. I try my best and it seems that my work ethic and positive attitude keeps me gainfully employed. But I’m fucking tired. Tired of the craziness that is my job where I can’t focus on any projects because I’m constantly thrown new things that take a lot of time and won’t actually help the business improve but are just pet projects from leadership. Did I mention I’m tired? Like, emotionally, mentally, physically drained.

And it’s not just because I have an almost-one-year-old and a 3 year old going on 13.

… So. I was gung ho about the 3rd kid thing with wanting a girl and then lately I’m just feeling like maybe that’s asking for things to go really bad. What if I die in childbirth? What if IVF gives me cancer? What if I have a girl and she hates me from the moment she slips out of my womb?

Possible.

But also, logistically, I’m not sure I can handle 3 kids. Now that my youngest is becoming a little human with his own needs and my oldest is his own growing mind person monster I want time to spend with both of them, together, and alone, as well as time to spend alone and alone and alone with my husband and so far I haven’t been good at any of these variables. I’m not thriving at work. I’m not thriving at home. I’m not thriving at anything. Except maybe gaining weight from binging on carbs to fill this pit of fear and confusion I feel at any given time.

Well at least I’m not fucking manic at the moment. So there’s that.

I sink deep into the sheets of the bed below me and wonder all sorts of things and don’t know the answer to any of them. I worry about my son who can’t handle noise and puts his hands over his ears when anything hums or buzzes and I wonder will he outgrow that or if not how does he handle living in a world that is made for people who are able to tune it all out? I worry about my younger child who is growing up with less attention than my first, who is being shoved by my 3 year old at times, and all the conflicting parenting advice on how to handle sibling conflict (while also being committed to ensuring he doesn’t get seriously hurt.)

I don’t know anymore. I feel old and like I’ve managed to do a lot in my life leading up to 38 and yet not enough at all. Like at 38 one should be VP or at least have some serious skills they are confident about and able to go into a job interview and be like “I’m the shit and if you don’t want to hire me I don’t care.” But what would I even say in a job interview? I babble. What do I know? I know how to serve the needs of sociopathic executives who are convinced they have the most brilliant ideas. I feel like this is not a worthwhile skill and even if it is, it’s not one I particularly want to be known for. I can’t. Do. This. For. Much. Longer.

I did one project the head of my department liked but he asked for some changes then the head of my team gave me feedback and I made changes and she really liked what I had written (even though I knew it wasn’t actually good so no hard feelings there) and then the head of the department was like WTF is this and clearly was not happy with the changes and so now I’m scrambling to put something together they both like at the last minute when I’m supposed to be on vacation. Luckily this vacation = sitting at my mom’s house and trying to pack up my childhood home so I have some flexibility but still — I really needed the mental break. My plan was to take 2 weeks off but I thought if I got 1 then that would be something. But here I am still working and I don’t know when it will stop. I’ll get Thurs and Friday off because everyone does but then I’m back.

Hey, at least when I’m back it’s December. I’m 38, ok, that sucks, but better than not making it to 38, and it’s also the final countdown to my final vest and final significant employe stock purchase plan purchase and bonus and 401k match and then I can leave whenever I have the energy to do so and find something better. It’s all finally here. It’s not a life-changing amount but it’s the end of what I committed in my brain to stay for and here I am and there… I have 117 days until I really have no significant reason to stay. They will go by fairly quickly I think. I have a lot to do. Even if I fail at the things I’m doing I don’t think anyone will realize it until well into those 117 days as long as I’m trying. Which I will be. I never stop trying. Trying isn’t exactly getting me anywhere though.

Curious what my performance review will say. In past years I wrote these long self reviews trying to highlight everything half decent I did over the year. This year I just threw together a few bullets. I have a different boss this year so maybe he won’t notice but I realize what I write doesn’t actually matter and I don’t deserve a great review. I’m either a 3/5 because I’m good enough to keep but not good enough to try to keep, or a 2/5 because I pissed a few people off over the year by missing deadlines or not communicating well or both (been there, done that, don’t think I did it this year but who knows.) I’m pretty sure a 4/5 is impossible for my role and abilities and a 1/5 I’d be fired already and a 5/5 isn’t real so… yea… I’ll be surprised if I don’t get the 3/5 but maybe I sucked more than I know over the year and I’ll hear all about it in January when reviews come out. I got a pretty sizable bonus when I got a 2/5 last year somehow so I’m thinking I’ll probably get a bonus again this year… and then… I don’t know. I really don’t know.

I wish my husband would be the type of guy who said “wow you’re clearly miserable and I want to do something that will make you happy — do you want to take some time off work? Maybe we should consider moving out of a HCOL area for a while and see how that goes so you don’t have to work so much? Or maybe we stay here but I apply to jobs that pay enough where you can work part time?”

He’d never say any of that. And I don’t know how I would react if he did. But wouldn’t it be lovely to have a husband who would be willing to put himself out there, do something that makes him a bit uncomfortable, to try to help his wife out a bit? Am I asking for too much? I mean, yea, I know who I married. And I don’t expect him to be CEO or anything but there are a few reasonable options at this point that would allow me to be maybe slightly less miserable and I don’t think he’d be willing to entertain any of them. So it’s up to me as always. I think a new job could help, but I don’t know how I can be successful in any job since I’m not actually good at anything. I just want to sleep and exercise and try to eat healthy and take some time to recover from the last four years of being beaten down so much (not to mention having two babies.)

Anyway, I guess this is what it’s like to be almost 38. And then to be 38 en route to 39 and then 40. And maybe one more baby. Or maybe no more babies. And hopefully enough money to pay the mortgage and the bills. At least. And watching my investments crash and being sad about how as a normal human the only way to get ahead and beat inflation is to invest yet that’s so risky even though it’s supposedly not that risky as long as you’re diversified and don’t need the money for years but who knows what the future holds so yea it’s all a gamble and it feels pretty shitty to have to gamble what you’ve earned in order to have a shot at a half decent future.

And that’s for someone who is privileged enough to even have that option… I’m aware so few are.

So here I am. Well. Hello 38. Nice to meet you, I guess.

ADHD, Adulting, Aging, Career, FIRE, Life as I Know It, Mental Illness, Parenting & Motherhood

Two Roads To Nowhere and Everywhere: Stay at Home Mom vs Working Mom

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I’m sure people reading my blog think I’m crazy with now over $2M in net worth not feeling comfortable leaving work for a while… a few months… a year or two… to spend with my young children. Maybe I am crazy. I’ll tell you what I feel. I feel no different than I did five years ago when my net worth was $500k or 10 years ago when it was $150k.

I am struggling with the concept of time and the time of time. 10 years passes in a blink and yet was it all that fast? I don’t know. 10 years ago with $150k net worth I was just starting my first job in this series of jobs after another series of jobs. I was making $100k. At the time that was such a huge salary I thought I would never earn more. Who would pay me more than $100k for anything?

10 years ago I was 27 going on 28. Approaching my 30s. A far different mindset than approaching one’s 40s. Pre children. Pre marriage. Living with roommates and dating my now husband and struggling with enough depression and self-hatred to push myself to keep going to prove that I could survive. Don’t believe me? It’s all here in this blog. All the years that have sprinted by. The failures. The successes. Three firings later. Day after day of waking up feeling not good enough. Not knowing what I’m doing. Trying to make it work. Trying to fit in. Having good moments. And many bad ones. Ten years later.

What will my life be 10 years from now? I’ll be 47 going on 48. What then? Will this decade feel over in a blink as well? How can I slow it down and make sure it lasts as long as possible – savor every second of it? I don’t know if one can at this age. Time just speeds up. And so there’s time and there’s money. It’s the race of both. You can spend less money. You can’t actually stop time. But to afford to leave the workforce you need a lot of money– and even then the system is rigged against you. That money in the stock market. Sure it will likely keep going up over time. That’s what they tell you. It has in the past. But the past is no indication of what will happen in the future. Though the only way to actually afford the future is to take what you’ve earned and bet on something that likely will go up but really who knows.

I’m too heavy in equities. Too heavy in individual stocks, although mostly in index funds. If the whole market crashes, how much does it matter? Does this mystical, mythical $2M disappear overnight? It doesn’t feel real if it’s not spent and if it’s spent then it isn’t real anymore at all. So it sits there, notated in an overly complex google spreadsheet that I look at each morning to see what it all looks like on that day. I open my computer and start trying to do work for my job that is fulfilling only in when I can help other people do their jobs that I’m uncertain if they find fulfilling or just acceptable in order to earn their own mystical, mythical money. I don’t know. I sit in meetings with senior executives who go off on some rant about something that at best doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of the betterment of the world and at worst are stained with sociopathy and that sly smile in passive aggressive attack that only someone with way more money in the bank can slide across their face so damn effortlessly. Everyone is trying to prove to everyone else that they are needed for those ahead of them to win and so even with the best of intentions it becomes this sick game that I’m not cut out to play.

10 years. My father was still alive. Still diagnosed with cancer. Still dying. But alive. Still yelling at my mother. An artist of arrogance. We were all so much younger then. I try to tell myself. 10 years is a long time. 10 years from now my oldest will be 13. Thirteen. My youngest, either 11 or 9 depending if I have another. I’ll hopefully be alive, but 10 years is also a long time for one’s body to attack itself, for health to slowly… or rapidly fail. For my husband to be here or to be ill or not here at all. For my mother to make it to 78 or pass away in her 70s, at an age that no longer inspires those who hear of passing to gasp noting “she was so young” in their condolences. It seems at 70 or maybe 75 it becomes acceptable to die. In ones 80s no one would feel pity over an early death. And 90 is when one feels pity that the person is still living. How fast the years go. Especially if you don’t make the greatest effort to slow them down.

And how can you slow them down? How can I? Well, I feel like there is a choice here. A fork in the road. Like in Squid Game — everyone chooses to play, even after they see what is at stake. Here I am and I see ahead of me 10 years of my children aging from babies to teens and I wonder how much of those 10 years is worth trading for days of panic attacks and feeling horrible at my job and to tired to be much of a mother.

Quit now and move somewhere affordable seems both like an impossible movie plot and an actual life story that could be mine. If only I wanted it enough. And then my husband agreed to it as well. Which would be quite difficult, but if I really knew in my heart it was the right decision — I don’t know — maybe I could convince him we need to leave this place. In a year sell our house. Get away from the rat race. The rat jungle. The rat infestation and bro culture and imposter syndrome and open office spaces and egos and people do don’t have time to connect or build community or they want you to pay a lot to buy in to a community you’ll never be a part of anyway.

If I quit here and stayed here I’d surely eat into my savings quickly. I’d want to do things during the day and going for walks to local parks would get boring after a while, wouldn’t it? There is much to sign up for if you’re a stay at home mom but then you need the money to fund it. Writing is free, at least. But what about my kid’s activities? How do I make sure I have enough to support their lives? I feel that I owe them the upper middle class life I was raised into. I didn’t know how to provide that but somehow through luck and determination here I am. Upper middle class. I guess. It doesn’t feel it. Not like my parent’s generation. One working parent and a nice house with decently nice everything. I’m certainly well off now in most of the world. I certainly don’t feel it.

But I do feel I owe my kids a life at least as good as the one I had growing up. My sister, who makes $14 an hour, refuses to have children because she says she can’t afford them. Yet many people have kids with low incomes — it’s just we were raised into a certain style of childhood and life and we feel our kids deserve at least that. I don’t want my kids to be spoiled. I don’t think I was either. Not horribly so. A little. But not enough to sit on my ass and do nothing. My sister has an incredible work ethic but no belief in herself or her ability to do better. I have random spurts of energy and a character flaw that is my need above all else to prove that I can survive and fit in and thrive in a world that may not be worth surviving.

What if — one year from now — I’m sitting somewhere, some nondescript down maybe — watching waves of a lake-ocean-river-sea crash to shore. Maybe it’s thundering. Or drizzling. Or pouring.  And I’m soaked and running in puddles with my children who are still children. And they don’t remember mom everyday at her laptop working or avoiding working and looking at social media only to be working later when she shouldn’t be because she can’t focus or get anything done. They wouldn’t remember the mess of a house or limited meals but instead clean floors and nutritious fresh food. We’d go on playdates and maybe get to know some people. Really get to know them as friends and build a community, though that’s wishful thinking as being a stay-at-home mom doesn’t suddenly turn me into Miss Popular. But still. What kind of life would that be? One where I am watching my account balances shrink each month instead of grow. I’d be terrified.

That fear is what drives me. But I don’t want to get to 2031 and look back on the last 10 years and say I traded moments for money. I let myself fall into the trap of worrying every single fucking day and waking up each morning feeling sick to my stomach because I know I’ll never do a consistently good enough job at work. Because I’m always on the verge of losing my job and having to admit failure yet again. To pick myself up again. And spend months trying to prove myself. A few victories here and there but nothing enough to stick. And so on. 10 years of that. I don’t know if I can take 10 more years of that.

See, 10 years ago seems like a long time ago. But 4 years ago seems like practically no time at all. Sure, in that time I’ve had two kids and both have grown quite a bit, but that time is all a blur and it doesn’t feel like 4 years it feels like 3 months. Though there is so much of it that I don’t remember. That skips time. And I’m afraid the next 10 years will be that but even faster. So I desperately want to slow the time down. To be present with my family. To take time to be a mom, not a mom who is thinking about the 10 meetings she has the next week while assisting her sons onto an amusement park ride.

I should be grateful that I have the money I do have. It does provide some options. It’s enough to tease me with those options but not enough for the options to be all that real. It’s enough, earned fast enough, to throw in my face that if I leave the workforce I’m not only going to be digging into my savings, but I’m also giving up the opportunity to really get to a place of financial independence for a lifestyle I want to have for my family. Why not a few more months? A few more years? Why not just keep holding my breath until my bank account ticks up to the next hundred thousand? I’m thinking $2.5M before leaving this job, but why not stick around until $3? Why not find another job to take me to $4 or $5M? $5M is the ultimate goal, $200k a year of income from the growth. Maybe then. Maybe then I’ll feel like I can slow down. But when will then be? Will my mind be complete mush by then? It’s hard to say. I just know I’m tired. I’m so tired. I’m tired mentally and physically and I need to sleep. So I’ll sleep now and wonder more about how people make decisions and how I can make decisions and if I’m even allowed to since now I’m a mom and a breadwinner and a home owner and I don’t get to just pick up and change things if they get too hard. This is real adulting. And it better be because I’m fucking old now.

Anxiety, Career, Mental Illness

Finding Balance in an Off-Kilter World

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Sell the house. Pack everything up. Take the $500k of home equity after realtor fees, consisting of $325k downpayment and $175k in gains, give or take, and move to most anywhere else in the country where one can buy a nice house for $500k or a few hundred k over that, get a part-time or otherwise flexible remote job w/ a tech company in my field, make less money but ultimately still refrain form dipping much into our $1.25M in taxable stocks and $750k in retirement savings. Spend a lot of time with family. Have a big private backyard with grass that is green because it actually rains. Maybe make some new friends. Spend the next 20 years of my life taking it easy, slow aging to 57. Not doing anything revolutionary at work, but it’s not like I’m revolutionizing anything now in my current field.

If I stay I can probably save a bit more. Maybe a lot more. But does that really matter?

It’s all a dream though because my husband will never leave. Despite refusing to earn more he won’t budge. Well, he’s offered moving to Seattle but $500k won’t get you much there either and I’ll fall into depression with the frequent grey skies. It’s a no-go for me.

But I definitely feel like I’m ready for a change. The things that matter to me today are different than they were years ago.

I still want another kid. That kid will likely require IVF. In my mind I’m committed to the Bay Area through that experience. I’ve written a bit about this before, but timeline wise… I start IVF when I’m 39. Hopefully get pregnant before I’m 40. Have the kid at 40. Hopefully have good maternity leave in whatever job I take next. And strong stock that gains (well, nice to have.) We stay in this home for at least 3 more years. Maybe it keeps going up in value. Maybe it comes down in value. It seems like Bay Area housing just goes up and up but it also still seems impossible for this place to be worth much more without work on it. I’m hesitant to put work into the house as I’d rather just leave. I hate having people work on the house when we live here. And each relatively minor project thus far has been a PITA.

I don’t know where we’d go. I don’t think my husband will leave. He won’t even move to Sacramento where we could spend less on housing because it’s too hot there. I have a very limited, very expensive radius where he would be open to moving. So I’m trapped.

I recently watched the series MAID on Netflix. It shared the story of a young single mom with nothing who was emotionally abused by her partner and who tried to start a life of her own but, without the help of others, couldn’t make it work with government support alone which had too much red tape. Anyway, it got me thinking a bit about abuse. Not that I’m being abused by my husband (or that I am any more than I emotionally abuse him) but it’s interesting to think of such dynamics in relationships…

I grew up in a domestic abuse situation. My father emotionally and physically abused my mother. He didn’t drink (thank god) but he constantly yelled and told my mother horrible things and gaslit her. I have a lot of trauma from this and so it’s hard for me to communicate properly in a relationship or be in a healthy relationship. Odds were for me to end up in an abusive relationship and I’m proud to report I’m not in one. Or am I?

Well. If I am I’m abusive too. My abuse is in deciding one thing then changing my mind. Because I feel incapable of making decisions and am used to having decisions made for me. I’ve told my husband that his father can live with us until his mother buys a house (which is dependent on her mother dying as she will then have no where to live as she lives in her house), and that he can work his part-time freelance job and stay home with the kids and I’ll keep working. Since I manage the household finances I know I need to provide for my family and make things work. The setup isn’t bad financially right now. His father pays $2k a month, which brings our $7k a month mortgage down to $5k. I figure that half of that is going to principal so in some sense we’re paying the same for the house as we were for a one bedroom rental. Maybe my math is off but it’s close. The real money suck is the cost of ownership and the lost gains on the downpayment that sat for a while, but that’s long gone. The house happened to appreciate a lot this year so maybe we’re close to break even.

My husband is pretty simple. He’s happy here. I mean he doesn’t love the area we moved to but he doesn’t hate it and he acknowledges with our financial situation we can’t afford to live in the are we both would prefer to live (never mind if he got a full time job we could.) He has a lot of anxiety (can’t say more or less than mine but different) and seems incapable of holding down a full time job. And we both agree that it’s better for him to be home with the kids vs send them to daycare.

I complain a lot. About stupid things. About not-so-stupid things. I look at our bank statements and think wow — I can’t say I deserve the $ I have now but our lives could be so much… better. I shouldn’t have to feel trapped in a job with leaders who are sociopathic and bosses who tell me I have a horrible personality for leadership. Perhaps I do but that’s besides the point. I’m tired. Exhausted. I’m trying my darnedest to just push through because the more I complain the less chance my husband will agree to the third kid. Which I know sounds manipulative on my end too. He wants to have a kid of the opposite sex as the two we have now, so he is agreeing to the plan for a third kid but I can tell he’s not sold.  That said he wasn’t sold on the second kid and he loves the kid more than anything. I think the one thing we’re really good at is being parents and loving our kids. I’m scared of a third but at this point my life is my kid’s life anyway what’s one more?

Where the abusive behavior comes in is in his inability to accept that I’m allowed to change my mind. Maybe I’m not. Maybe because I do it all the time about important things and drive him crazy I am at fault here. But some things you don’t know until you know. I thought I’d be fine working and seeing my kids only a few hours a day. I didn’t understand how tired I’d be. I didn’t realize how four years later I’d still feel the same way about my career and see it as a dead end of stress and exhaustion. I don’t know if it’s wrong to think that in a marriage one’s partner should care about them and they’re well being and lean into what would make them happy and/or helping them find it. I’m not the best at that either. But I bought this house because it (sort of ) worked for his father to live with us (and gave up the master bedroom suite for this to work) and I ordered him a fancy treadmill because he wanted to be able to work out at home since he can no longer go to the high school track at 2am now that we’ve moved away from the safer area (even though I always though that was a bad idea!)

It’s interesting too because I’m watching now my friends going through what is a variety of situations with their lives. Those who are still with their partners from their 20s and early 30s seem less than happy. Those who have started over seem to have shifted what they wanted in a partner and are happy now albeit also in interesting setups that are maybe not the best long term.

One friend, still married, has a hard-working husband who is never home. He owns his own business. She shares that he’s never around to spend time with the kids outside of holidays and other major events. She got her nice house and attractive husband but I think she’s quite lonely. She also doesn’t think he runs his business well to make the most income but last I’ve heard he doesn’t want her meddling in his professional life. She works in a low-paid job so is stuck. She seems happy with her kids and friends but I’m not sure life is what she wanted.

Another friend got married quickly to a man who didn’t seem like a fit in order to start her family. She had big dreams of becoming a SAHM and having a husband who earned enough for a nice house and to support her family. Well her husband was depressed for a number of reasons. She put up with him not asking for raises or seeking to get ahead for her family. But then she found out he was cheating on her. And he left her for the other woman. She actually met up with the husband of the other woman and fell in love with him and a short time later they got married and had another child! Now they live in a large house with five children and are trying for one more. Luckily the guy made good money so he could afford it even with the crazy alimony he pays to his ex wife. She was able to quit her low-paid job and become a full-time stay at home mom. She seems exhausted but also it’s the life she wants.

And yet another friend who ended up a single mom due to her boyfriend being batshit has been struggling to get by despite having a reasonably well-paid career. Lately her hours were cut and she didn’t know what to do. But a boyfriend from the past reappeared. He seems to be wealthy — owns his own business and maybe has millions of dollars. He’s throwing money at her to help her pay her bills. She feels bad about taking it but also needs the support to afford her mortgage and daycare. She seems to really like the guy, despite that he has an aversion to telling her that he loves her. She thinks they might get married and have more kids. I haven’t met the guy but she’s known him for years and I think in some way having an old bf come back into your life can be a good thing because you’re not blinded by the novelty of a relationship but really valuing the good parts of the relationship. So she seems like she might be on her way to a happy, stable life.

And another friend still with her (first) husband tells me that her husband says mean things to her and while she earns more he doesn’t do anything to help around the house. She’s at her wits end though they’re still together so maybe she’ll put up with it.

I mean, relationships are complicated. And being a woman is a strange thing in modern society. It’s still acceptable to quit your job and become a SAHM and have a husband who earns enough to pay for the entire family (though not always possible.) And it seems in most cases where I see friends being happy it’s this setup. Even my Bay Area friends have this setup. Some were the wife quit others were wife works a passion project but it definitely isn’t about earning income (and some years actually looses money.) I’m sure every couple has their ups and downs but this seems to work.

So I try to put myself in the mindset that I play that traditionally male role in the household. And if I do I really can’t complain about anything. My job is to pay for my family. Men usually don’t talk about how much they hate their jobs with their wives. They just deal with it or get another job. They don’t talk about moving because they try to make their wives happy. They feel like this is their responsibility. Maybe they like being in this role and having that responsibility. Maybe I like it a bit as well. It makes me feel like I have some value in this world.

I guess I still feel like I’m in a mildly abusive relationship. But maybe every relationship is mildly abusive. Because there’s a tension that comes from being stuck with someone who doesn’t share everything you want in life, feeling like you have to make them happy but also try to find your own happiness when the world tells you as a parent (esp as a mom) your happiness comes second or third. And maybe you don’t know what makes you happy anymore. Because before the world was your oyster. You had hopes and dreams. Everything was set up for you to be something and do something big. And now it’s clear that’s not what life is about. The time for when you could be something or do something is behind you, statistically speaking. So your life now is just about trying to stay healthy for as long as possible and teaching your children how to be good people and how to go after their hopes and dreams before it’s too late for them too.

If I had a clear picture of what I wanted that would help as well. It sure sounds like moving to a lower cost of living area would help the stress levels but a huge part of me doesn’t want to give up the opportunity that exists here. I don’t even know what kind of opportunity there is since I don’t want to pursue work at a startup or being VP even if recruiters are reaching out to me to interview for these roles. I would NEVER see my kids. I don’t want a job that requires a lot of (or any) travel. I’m torn between staying in my current role where I am miserable precisely because there is no opportunity for growth (or to earn more) and not wanting to grow and seeing other roles at the same level of work paid even lower without moving up. What makes me sad is the feeling of being trapped. I’m not actually trapped. But I can’t rationally change anything because things aren’t that bad right now. Even earning $250k next year after my stock drops off is pretty darn good. If you would have asked me 5 years ago if I would jump at a job making $250k I would, of course say yes!

I don’t really want to be a SAHM mom either. It’s Sunday morning and I’m hiding from my kids (who are with my husband and now with my FIL) writing a long blog post. I took them out all day yesterday for a hike and lunch and drive and I’m super exhausted now. I couldn’t do that every day of my life. Working is a lot easier!

But what I’d like is for my husband to not make me feel bad about the fact that all these things are grey. For him to support me in that I agreed to his father living with us before I experienced him being here. Before I experienced our bed in our family room with no privacy for a year. Before I found out that it wouldn’t work like it did when his father came over on the weekdays to help out but instead his father would come out of his in-law every morning even on the weekends when I just wanted to have my family in the house. How this lack of boundaries makes me incredibly anxious and how it is important to me that my husband watches the kids on Sunday mornings while I have some alone time in the office. That we need to treat our areas of the house as separate units. That even if he comes out for a short while it makes me feel uncomfortable in my own space. That I would never just go into his in law without knocking or assume that I can do that. I failed to understand how the boundaries would be set. And it all went to hell last year anyway when I had a newborn and I was grateful for the help. But now, I just want a bit more privacy. I want to be able to walk around my house in a robe and feel ok about it.

This all impacts my marriage a lot. I feel like my husband doesn’t actually care about me. He would likely say the same in reverse. So that’s not good. I am trying to get my things in the house cleaned because that’s a huge issue and I know I need to keep my stuff organized (with my ADHD it can get quite bad.) And it seems like he’s unwilling to care about me in the least until I can do that. I accept that as it has been an ongoing issue. Never mind that my income makes it possible for us to live here at all. Or that I’m still breastfeeding our youngest child and can’t be on my own for more than three hours at a time. But I agree my mess needs to be cleaned up. So I’ll do that. But I don’t get the sense that he’ll change at all for me. He doesn’t care to. Because he’s convinced he is always in the right. Maybe he is. He always makes me think because I came from such a messed up family that I don’t know how things should be. I question myself whether I do. And sometimes when I complain too much and it has been a particularly rough night he flips out and while he’d never harm me he starts hitting himself in the head and shaking in frustration and it’s really scary. I realize that I am harming him and I need to stop. I need to stop complaining. I need to stop telling him one thing and changing my mind.

Mostly he’s a mellow, calm guy. But when he’s tired and frustrated he can crack. It scares me. It has happened a few times. Once over a stupid thing where he was putting together a kitchen set for my son and put the wrong screws in and I asked him to fix it and he freaked out. I don’t remember what the last fight was about. I think because I ask him to do things and then he doesn’t do them well and then I make comments about that and he gets really mad. And always if I chew with my mouth slightly open he treats me like I’m a 2 year old. Should I chew with my mouth open? No. It’s a bad habit and it’s disgusting and I shouldn’t do it. But the way he treats me really upsets me. I mostly try to not eat around him. He just gives me this look and puts his fingers to his mouth and it makes me feel like I’m shoved into the ground, like I’m a little girl being scolded. You know, little me earning $250k+ a year and supporting the family. Being treated like shit because sometimes I chew and make noises with my mouth. Is that acceptable?  I don’t know. I guess I make him feel bad about a lot of things too. How does a relationship survive this kind of constant subtle cruelty to each other? Is any of it justified? If I make an effort to change, will he? He doesn’t see anything wrong with his behavior. I think that’s the difference. I’m aware that I need to change. He’d doesn’t think he needs to at all.

I am just frustrated I can’t delegate things. Like getting the refrigerator ice machine fixed with the home warranty that was running out. Well the ice machine was fixed but the water has a leak coming out of it when you use it and I makes a mess on the floor. I want him to be able to think that he should check that the whole thing works properly when the guy is here so that way it can actually be fixed since we paid $75 for the warranty to send the repairman out and now we don’t have a warranty anymore. I want him to be able to think in a more detailed way but he doesn’t know how to do this. So I know I should just not delegate these tasks. Or I should stop caring about the flood of water on my kitchen floor every time I get water from the fridge.

When he gets into these moods they last a minute or so and it’s terrifying. I realize that he is not well mentally and he could seriously harm himself because of my nagging. So I shut up. And shut down. I know nagging is not the way to get what I want anyway. I can’t change him. And he can’t change me even though I’m trying to be better at being a housemate. I don’t know. I just feel sad and tired. And like no amount of money can fix me or my life.

ADHD, Adulting, Career, FIRE, Mental Illness, Parenting & Motherhood

When is There Time for Enjoying Life?

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Another Saturday. Another October. Another fall. Wasn’t it just two years ago when I was going absolutely batshit in the middle of an undiagnosed mania, which was enjoyable only during a week in London when I wandered around and manically documented fall leaves against cobblestone on Insta? And mostly un-enjoyable when I was thrust into this alter-ego self who isn’t particularly acceptable by any standards of normal socialization. And now, back into fall, two years later, a world later, a pandemic still pandemic-ing later, an infant to toddler to pre-k’er and a new baby who is about to be a toddler later, $1.5M in net worth later, a house purchase and a health scare and a clean MRI later, here I am,  new place, same place, trying to be grateful for everything because I know nothing lasts forever, and failing miserably at embracing gratitude over guilt and grievances. So, same old, or same new.

Fall is a monster of melancholy. Autumn air exhausts exhaustion. I could easily lie in my bed for the following months and not notice how long I’ve been in hibernation despite how mild west coast’s seasonal changes are.

The truth is I’m incredibly overwhelmed, behind, and unable to figure out how to get any of my Iife in order. Having ADHD with a heaping of perfectionism makes it extra hard. My house is chaos. I’m trying, despite not sleeping much last night, to muster up the energy to clean it. Organize it. Ok, so it won’t be a home as in a home that I want to live in, without a private bedroom and instead a living situation I should have never agreed to but let my frugal house-hacking hat take charge in a decision I can’t go back on. It’s not the worst case. It’s a house. We own it. I don’t like being a home owner. I knew I’d be bad at it given I wasn’t the best at maintaining a one bedroom apartment. But there’s still something good about owning. Not financially good. It just feels like a real accomplishment. I haven’t had any accomplishments. None that felt worthy of being called an accomplishment, anyway. I guess graduating college is an accomplishment. Getting a job is an accomplishment. But they never really felt like much of anything to be proud of. Everything was barely completed. A failure in the making. Maybe home ownership is too. But I feel really good about buying a home for my kid’s to live in. I don’t think it makes any sense but it feels good to own a house. I know plenty of parents don’t own and it’s fine to raise kids in apartments but for me that would be rough to accept. I blame growing up with a mother who frequently mentioned the kids in “the apartments” as being poor and thus bad somehow. Not that I believe that now. But still part of me felt like buying a house made it ok for me to have kids. Saving enough to afford them, whatever that means.

But now I have a house. And savings. Nonetheless, I feel incredibly behind. And every moment I feel like I might be getting ahead life plays a joke on me. Like just now. I put my wash up and was just admiring how nice my laundry room floor looks like without the huge pile of clothes on it. And then a big “bang” shakes the ground and my eyes question what they just saw as a giant container of Woolite my husband placed on top of the washer apparently leapt to its death, with the lid flailing off of it and spilling soap all over the remaining pile of clothes and the chord to the Swiffer. Nothing unmanageable as one thing, but life feels like a big pile up of a cluster where you take 2 steps ahead and 3 steps back.

I wanted to be a full time mom on the weekends, with the in-laws NOT taking care of my children, and yet here I am again, 11am, in-laws watching the kids as I attempt to clean up. I’m always cleaning up but never getting anything clean. I also am so tired. I stayed up late catching up on work because the only time I can focus on work is when my son is asleep on me from 9-1am. Which is when I should also be sleeping. I’m still far behind on work. Luckily my actual work requires about 20 hours a week to manage at this point, it’s just the issue of finding uninterrupted time.  I’d give anything for 6 hours straight with no distractions. But that’s impossible since I either have to feed my son or pump. And yes, I can stop breastfeeding at any time but I’m not willing to sacrifice that for work. There are some things I won’t sacrifice and that’s one of them.

(loud thud on cue. Another bottle leaps from the top of my washing machine. This one seems to at least have its cover on tight and no spillage is observed.)

I keep thinking if only I can just get my life together. Just get my house in order. Get caught up at work. Make lists of everything I have to do. Go through the list. At some point. At some point I’ll be able to breathe this breath of fresh air and spend time with my kids in a way that feels relaxing. I will be able to make the case that my in-laws (especially my FIL who lives with us) should stay in his apartment/room on the weekends so I can be a g-d darn mom. That doesn’t mean spending every second with my kids, they should have some boring down time too. I had plenty of that as a kid. I really don’t like that grandpa is with my son from 9-4:30 straight every day.. I’m glad my son started preschool but that’s only 2.5 hours 2 days a week. And I feel like a failure not being a mom right now. Yes I’m writing this blog post. As a break from cleaning. And now a break from cleaning up the spill of soap on the laundry room floor. Before I need to feed my baby around noon, probably, then breastfeed at 1 and put him down for his nap (he’ll only sleep on me or dad and dad is working today so that means I’m stuck in bed from 1-3 or grandma takes him and he doesn’t sleep.)

There is this overwhelming feeling/acceptance at this point that I’ll never actually be able to live the life I want so why the fuck try anymore. That is what led to this idea to quit work in August. I know I’d be ok for a few months without an income but I’m really scared I won’t be able to find something else or if I do that the job will require even more work and less time with my kids. For all the things I don’t like about my current job it really is super flexible while I can work from home (not sure when I have to go back but eventually) and I shouldn’t given this up, even if my income goes down year after year because I’ve been demoted without a pay decrease but I won’t actually get any stock refreshes so there is no way my income will keep up unless I go to a new company. I don’t have the energy to go to a new company. I can barely keep my eyes open.

I wonder if there’s a way to get my life anywhere near where I want it to be. I ponder hiring a cleaning service for the house, then find out cleaning services will cost $350 to come for a one time cleaning and $200+ a month and it seems like I should just learn how to clean my home.

(Another bottle flails off the top of the washer with a loud clunk. Not joking.)

I just want a kitchen table. A non plastic-folding kitchen table. A bedroom with a door. Grout in the kitchen that isn’t brown when it’s supposed to be beige. A refrigerator that holds more food. Sheets that aren’t navy with an olive green comforter my husband bought years ago for camping. A backyard that doesn’t have an accidental tree growing against the wall of my home and breaking the foundation. And trees that aren’t in various stages of dying that need to get looked at for another few thousand dollars.

It’s funny because the more money I have the more I get anxious about it. In investments it doesn’t feel real. But I just know that I need it there as a safety net. I mean, if I were to have $10M I could never work again because it’s impossible for me to spend more than $400k per year if I knew that was something I’d have forever. Not that I need $10M before FIRE, but just saying where I’m at now is not FIRE for me.

A friend I met on a social site for moms in the technology world told me she got hired at a company and will be making 500k a year, and her husband is promoted to a job making 400k a year. They will be making 900k+ a year for the rest of their careers and probably much more as they continue to get promoted. How do I compete with that? I don’t have to compete with THAT but that’s what people are earning here in the Bay Area. Or one-worker families with engineers making like $600k or more. In my current company had I not fucked up I could have been on the high-earner trajectory. I even magically experienced it for a few years (I’ll be making about $600k this year with my stock earnings.) But that’s not forever. That’s not even next year. So just quitting doesn’t seem to be the right answer either. Do I try to convince a FAANG to hire me (they won’t) or do I go back to school or do I give up and convince my husband to move to anywhere else we can buy a house and not have a mortgage so high and where I can actually be awake to see my children on occasion. I don’t know.

I feel really sad is all I know. I should keep cleaning and I probably will. I need to get that soap off the floor. My husband is busy with a project he took on to earn $5k extra a year. That’s good for him. I always complain that he doesn’t take on any extra clients so I should be incredibly supportive. But then I wonder in the extra $5k worth it… $2.5k after tax. For all the work he puts into this project. Especially three days when he needs to be available full time and works into the night. I don’t know. Money is so weird. I know we have more than most people in the country but I’m in this weird bubble of Silicon Valley where money doesn’t make sense.

And I’m just. So. Tired.

 

Career, FIRE, Married Life

Can I Afford to Take a Year Off of Work? Should I?

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I never thought I would want to be a stay-at-home-mom…. and I don’t really want to be a stay at home mom… but I do want flexibility to work on my own time and not feel guilty if I want to take a half day or day to drive my kids to the beach to just hang out… or to volunteer in my kid’s preschool… or take my sponge-brain 3 year old to a museum to learn something new.

While I loosely thought about taking some time off when my oldest son turns 4 year old… that time is fast approaching and I’ve made no such plans. It turns out 3 is actually a pretty important time to be there for him. There will be plenty of years when he is locked into a school schedule and we can’t do anything during the week anyway. It is hitting me hard how the next year-and-a-half is the last year I can spend quality weekday time with my son.

I’ve also had a bit of a wake up call about how life short is with all of my health issues this year.  It doesn’t matter if they were benign — I felt horrible for a good chunk of the past 12 months. While I feel a bit better these days, I realize that my health is at best stable but fleeting. And while if I quit my job I won’t exactly be able to travel the country without worrying about money, I can maybe spend a bit more time with my extended family for a short while, or even just with my close family… just cleaning up the house and cooking healthy food and going out for walks with the moms that go for hikes with their kids during the day.

I couldn’t do that forever. I’d be bored out of my mind. But… 6-12 months seems like a good amount of time to detach from work and really be present with my kids who are growing crazy fast.

Is this sabbatical dream realistic? Is it FIRE/career sabotage? Am I out of my mudderfudden mind?

Maybe?

I’ve saved a lot of money during the last four years at this job. It’s pretty crazy how much I’ve been able to save. It might not be as much as some of my colleagues who have stock thrown at them each year in lavish refreshes but my initial grant was solid and here I am four years later, two kids later, and a good chunk of family net worth growth that was largely from RSU (and some from general stock market growth of investments.) From 600k or so to $2M, give or take. That’s huge. That’s… worth pausing and reflecting on what’s next at least, right?

Sure I still owe $1.2M on my mortgage and the house needs a lot of work. I still want to do IVF for my 3rd (and final) kid and that’s going to be $$$$. We can bring out expenses down a bit but if I’m not working I’ll want to spend money on things to do. I’m not sure how much I can get our expenses down realistically.

My thought, as of today, is that I work next year at my current company through the end of July then I quit… with nothing lined up. What everyone says not to do.

That’s 10 months from now. In those 10 months we can save an extra $114k or so after expenses. Most of that will go to retirement accounts. The rest can be saved for the remainder of the year and my time off. I can (and would) try to build a number of freelance projects at that time to ensure we don’t have to dip into our savings to cover the year beyond anything earned in the next 10 months.

If I do that then it looks like we can still close out 2022 with ~$2.6M in net worth, or something a lot less than that if the stock market crashes or more if it soars. In any case, the 6-12 months off don’t seem like they would totally destroy us financially, at least on their own. The issue is what happens when I need to return to the workforce to get a job. We cannot live on my husband’s income alone. If I can’t pick up freelance work then things could get ugly. I’m also used to being the primary earner. I like the freedom to never have my spending questioned (beyond when I buy things that clutter the house.)  It would definitely be a big change for me, but maybe not a bad one. Who knows, perhaps the freelancing route could prove lucrative enough if I focus on it.

I have a few key concerns in doing this:

  • Not being able to find a job when I need to go back to full time work. Serious concern.
  • Healthcare costs overall — how to afford healthcare without having it through work for my family — is COBRA an option? How much will that cost if we actually need to use it?
  • Giving up disability insurance through work — is that a really dumb idea?
  • What if my husband loses his job when I’m out of work? We’ll be ok for a while but it would be pretty crappy.
  • Will my husband go back on his openness to have a third child (via IVF) if I’m not working and making a substantial income? Should I just hold out until I have a third child (or don’t) before taking time off?
  • What if I’m not working but I’m still not capable of having the energy to be a good mom and instead just end up depressed and waste the time off?
  • What if I spend too much on things to do because I’m bored and end up cutting into savings more than I expect?
  • If I can continue to WFH and get my projects organized — my current job pays well and enables me to get a good paycheck and still be home with my kids (but not with the flexibility to do whatever I want when I want with them.)

And a few reasons why I think this makes sense…

  • My kids are only young once and this time is very important to me
  • I need to focus on my health and my kid’s health and I’d like to spend the time to cook healthy food, exercise, have friends, etc
  • I’m not in a good place at my job and I’m not sure what to do next, and this gives me an opportunity to step away from the workforce without jumping into something else to run from what I’m doing now.
  • This provides the opportunity for me to try to build a freelance career and see how that goes for a few months.
  • My husband makes $100k a year and I’ll make about $167k before I leave work the end of July, so I think it’s fair if I take the rest of the year off (TBD about the following year)
  • I’ve saved more than I ever thought I would by this point and I always said I want to take the year my son is 4 off. My youngest will be 1.5 which is a good time to spend with him as well.
  • I’m tired and mentally unwell. If I take a significant break I can probably go back into the workforce refreshed and better at my job.
  • If I can focus and use the time wisely I can take some online classes or read books to learn new skills so I can reenter the workforce in 2023.
  • I can use the opportunity of a lower-income year to sell some or all of my ESPP for low capital gains (since I have $350k in ESPP right now it would be good to start selling it off, and it’s best to do that in lower income years and I can use that to supplement my income.)
  • If I take 2024 off as well I can use that time to do some Roth rollovers before the government outlaws them esp if my income will be high again in the future (possible since I will remain in a HCOL area)

I haven’t run this by my husband yet. He’s currently stressed out about a work project he’s on this week and he said he doesn’t have time to hear about any of my plans. It certainly will be hard to convince him that I should be allowed to quit my job. I’m worried I will need to be perfect if I’m not working. I mean, right now I’m not exactly the best wife ever but I work hard and make good money and provide for the family so at the least I add value to our household. If I’m not working I need to step up a lot in other areas. I want to, but what if I can’t. It’s not like my mental health issues will disappear overnight. But maybe with the time I can catch up on sleep and try to be a better mom and partner. I don’t know. I feel like I’ve got 10 months in me at this job and I’m either jumping into a new company where I’ll feel like I need to stay at least 4 years (and my oldest son will be 8 and practically a preteen at the end of that!!!!!!!!!) OR I take the time now. And I figure it out as I go. I maybe will kill hopes of FIRE’ing but I don’t really want to retire early when my kids are headed off to college. That’s when I want to work because that’s when I’ll feel sad and lonely and want to distract myself. Now? I want the time to spend with my kids. I still want another kid. My husband may not support that if I stop working. But what I want him to understand is how I’ve saved up enough in 4 years that’s comparable to what many people can save in many years, in some cases their entire careers. I don’t think I deserve anything for this, but at the least it should allow consideration of this plan.

I’m still scared but this just feels right, at least right now.

I don’t have to make any decisions at the moment… can see how things play out the rest of this year and early next. Then I can make the call. If my husband agrees to this plan I can even look for where to cut spending more in the next 10 months. I know I can make this works. I just… am so scared. I don’t know how to stop pushing myself. But I need the break. To figure everything out. To be a mom. To heal my body and my mind. I want this. Not sure if that matters, but I know now it’s what I want.

Career, Mental Illness, Parenting & Motherhood, Pregnancy, Working Moms

From Now Till 40: Closing This Chapter of My Life and How

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I haven’t written much about how much I want a third child or how in my heart I long for a baby girl more than anything in the world. I’m so grateful to have my two healthy and beautiful boys, and I know they can grow up to be girls as well, and a person born a girl can become a boy — but I still have this desire to have a girl that I can’t shake. I can’t shake it and I’m willing to use interventions to try to make it happen in the last years I might be fertile.

I’ve accepted it’s unlikely to work. That I’ll probably waste $50,000 on stabbing myself with various medications to make myself ovulate and then fertilize eggs that don’t make it to hatching, or those that do don’t actually stick and get me pregnant. It would be far easier to try again naturally at 38, when my second child is 18 months, as maybe I’ll get pregnant again without needing intervention and not have to wait so long (to do IVF I need to stop breastfeeding and I try to go 2 years before weaning.) My husband may also have some medical issues that may cause us to need IVF anyway this time around.

Girl or boy, there’s a place in my family for one more. I feel it in my bones. When I was younger, I always wanted three and couldn’t imagine myself a mother of any. Now that I’m a mom I want a relatively big family. Three seems like an acceptable amount of big. I know it will be hard — it’s already hard. I know it will be financially challenging. I know there are a thousand reasons not to try for a third kid. And yet, here I am, practically obsessed with the idea of it. Because life is short and I’m going to be 40 soon (!!!!!) and it’s (soon to be) now or never.

So I’ve made a calendar I hope to stick to. Who knows if I will. My second child somehow decided to stick to my calendar for him, so why not continue the streak of good luck? Baby one took a while and some medical intervention, but then this kid stuck on one of two tries within two days. Maybe I’m more fertile now than I was before. I’m trying to accept that I may be “done.” I’m terrified of being pregnant again. I’m equally terrified of what IVF drugs will do to my body given I’m so hyper sensitive to everything. What they’ll do to my already unstable mental health. Yea, it’s probably a  bad idea. But I’m full of bad ideas that turn out ok in the end. Usually. And when I get my mind stuck on something it’s hard to change it.

It seems to really make sense to leave this job in April. At that point my 12 month income will be about $275k, so if I can find a job that earns that much with a higher base I think I need to take it. I’m giving myself until Feb 2023 to find the right job. At that point my 12 month income will be $258k buy by Jul 2023 it drops to $238k. And all of these numbers are assuming full bonus payout which is unlikely. So April – Feb feels like appropriate timing.

I want to start IVF in or around June 2023. I would like to be pregnant (if I’m going to be pregnant) by Aug 2023 or as early as June 2023. This means I need to start new job 4 months before that. But I also want a job that pays for IVF if possible which means I need to start the new job ideally 3 months before starting IVF, which also aligns with the Feb 2023 “last call” timeline. I think giving myself April – February  to find a new job is a pretty good and realistic plan.

During this time I also need to loose 40lbs and hit $2.5M in net worth, which is the minimum net worth I committed to my husband so we can have a third child. Markets may crash but as of today we are at $2.2M and on track to clear $2.35M by April 2022. I was hoping we would be at $3M before IVF but I think we are close enough at this point. If I do have another kid I feel good about being able to afford them even if I go through a few bad years career wise.

Right now I’m trying to focus on getting the most (resume juice) out of my current job. I’ve got a lot of plans and am focused on having some solid quantifiable results from the projects I’m working on. I’m curious what my performance review and pay bump will look like this year. Part of me wants them to realize how valuable I am to the company and throw money at me but they won’t. I have no path to that. I’ll be lucky if I get a 3/5 and a COL raise. I accept nothing I do will be good enough. I accept the have staked the cards against me and want to nudge me out the door. I guess I’m ok with that as long as I can land somewhere better. That won’t be easy. I may be able to get a job at a small startup but if I want to go big company it will take a lot of work and luck.

I can’t believe it is almost Oct. I’m now really in my 6 month countdown to breaking free of the golden handcuffs. It seems achievable. My next job will be 38-41 or so, and I want it to see me through my third (and likely last) child, as well as get us over $3.5M by 41. Then my kids will be 7(!), 4 and 1. Maybe then I’ll do consulting and focus on some more freedom in my 40s. This next job really needs to count. I’m scared shitless but also ready to build the life I want, not the life that I’m handed.

Career, Mental Illness

The Path to Not Feeling Like a Mess is Not Necessarily a Lower-Earning Job

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If I could be handed a job that makes $100k less than my current role where I knew I would be mentally well in the position, I would take in a heartbeat. But the reality is that no matter the pay of the job I struggle. In fact, roles that tend to pay more where I can focus more on strategy and less on execution are ones that I tend to feel overall better in (though I still have work on interpersonal skills and comms to get to a point where I can be successful in these roles.) And the reality is I can’t just get a job that pays less — those jobs are hyper competitive as well and will likely go to someone from a top school with less experience.

Early this morning I ran the numbers again regarding my potential earnings and when I can / should leave my current job. This as the head of my department sent out a shoutout to everyone who worked on a project that I oversaw as part of the pool of work that I theoretically own and while everyone including my boss (who hasn’t touched the project) was given a shout out, guess who was left off?

I’m just tired of having a job that doesn’t make sense. I want to have real ownership over something so it’s clear what success is. The only success metrics that exist for my role right now is if everyone else likes me or not. Apparently no one else likes me. Which I’d like to fix. But I would like some other metrics to be included in whether or not I deserve a “below expectations” or “meeting expectations” on my performance review.

What I do know is that I failed to come in to the org when I had the chance to build a scalable function properly. But I also was given a role that was multiple roles with no clear job description. I can’t believe that was FOUR YEARS AGO but somehow it looks like I’m making it to my final vest date. Even getting to the end of this month is a huge win as I get the third of four ESPP periods bought and the second to last RSU vest. There was a long time when getting through this September was my victory. The next final big income moments are icing on the cake — December for RSU, Feb for bonus (if I get a bonus), and March for final big ESPP and a much smaller RSU vest. December is maybe not “icing” as it’s an extra $139k (pre tax) give or take… which is more than my husband makes in a year… but after this month is over I’m looking at ~$300k income for 12 months that drops significantly the following year, which means finding a role that pays $250k more consistently might be an ok move. Or I interview for a long time and really wait until I find the right thing, but if the right thing happens to pop up sooner than expected I can leave and feel good about it.

For me what’s important is feeling like I’m appreciated. I know if one is appreciated financially then who cares about the rest. But to me appreciation means being given opportunities that make sense on a resume with clear ROI and objectives. Being trusted with the things that matter. Of course my projects are high visibility in many cases, but they aren’t seen as core to the business success. And I’m also being pushed further and further into a project management role where my creative and strategic insights aren’t needed anymore. And trust me, I’m the last person who should be project managing anything as a full time job.

I really can’t figure out if I should leave or stay. Staying means feeling like shit all the time because there is no room to grow and I’m in a role that is ill defined. Leaving means starting over and needing the energy to show extremely well for at least 6 months while still not getting enough sleep as a relatively new mom. I also struggle with wanting a job that’s remote for the flexibility (which has been wonderful) and knowing that I really am feeling disconnected from my peers and the inspiration that helps me do my best work by never seeing them in person. Not that most jobs are back in person yet anyway but I go back and forth between looking for a job that is always going to be remote vs one that when covid ends will be back in the office a few days a week.

And I really don’t even see how I can get another job so there’s that issue too. Who really wants to hire me anyway?

Career, Mental Illness

Stay or Go or Stay Then Go? Deconstructing the last 4 years.

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It’s hard to look back at the last four years and feel good about much of it, other than managing to remain employed through some serious close calls to being fired (not to mention two pregnancies.) My ego gets the best of me time and again so it’s hard to fight through these last months to get the remaining shares of my main vesting period. But outside of the good compensation, there’s a whole lot of maybe not-so-ok experiences that happened to me in the last 4 years and I just want to hash it out because I’m hurting a lot and I want to make sense of it.

2017 I join the company with an offer from a senior exec who knew me from working together years ago. The role wasn’t defined clearly but he was also very excited to have me join the team. It was a much smaller company at the time. I didn’t negotiate my compensation, but felt it was fair. I was also coming off a pretty bad situation at another startup where I was running a department and didn’t know what I was doing so I lost my job and was having trouble finding another one. I was grateful for the opportunity.

I joined the team and there wasn’t clear direction. I was given a headcount but not enough budget to hire someone with experience. I didn’t want to hire anyone so I was waiting until the right person applied and I lost the headcount because it took too long to hire. I was able to hire a freelancer to help out but still because of the comp level that person was junior. She was good for being junior but still I was figuring out the role and then trying to manage a person who was junior and that wasn’t going well. Soon after joining I was leveled and reported to a new boss. I actually got along with her at first. She didn’t want to give me any guidance on what to do, so I continued to try to figure it out on my own. But I really didn’t know what to prioritize because there were no clear goals on the team. When I asked for goals to help determine what to do I was told that I should figure out what they are with people who then would not want to collaborate with me on this, they were very territorial over setting the goals and all the things that went with achieving them. Hard to explain without revealing too much about who I am but the main point was no one was willing to be collaborative and it made me look like the bad guy who wasn’t collaborative but I couldn’t get the information needed to do the work. Maybe I wasn’t leading enough or influencing enough but because my role wasn’t clearly defined it was really fucking hard to convince anyone to work with me properly.

Meanwhile, I was pregnant with my first child all through the first year of the job. I was given a whole bunch of random projects that didn’t make sense for one role and yet I delivered on them. Then when I came back after having my first child (and my father passing away and a long bout of depression) I really struggled. What was possible to fake it through before became like walking up a hill covered in sludge. While they gave me an acceptable performance review the year I was on maternity leave, the next year I fell on my face time and again. It was a mix of not sleeping, anxiety, depression, and imposter syndrome, and still not understanding my role. Meanwhile as the company grew others were hired around me and they seemed to just fit the corporate culture better. They weren’t necessarily more talented or able, but they knew how to play the game. It was that year that I was put on a performance plan. I was devastated because I felt horrible about letting my boss down. But I was given six months to shape up or get out.

In those six months I managed to pull it together. Those six months were actually the early days of covid. And when I got pregnant with my second child. I didn’t tell my boss I was pregnant for a long time. I wanted to show her I could be a good employee without her feeling like she had to judge me lightly since I was pregnant. And I actually succeeded. Despite being exhausted in my first trimester, I managed to earn recognition for my work done in those first six months. Things were starting to look up.

But then I took on a project that seemed like a good idea. I created the plan, pitched it, and everyone seemed on board. It was going to require collaboration from the larger team. Well, once we set the plan and we were moving forward an important person was put on another project and said never mind we aren’t doing the full project, just a piece of it. I felt strongly about why we had decided to do the full project to add value to the business so I pushed on and took on more than I should have on my own. I wasn’t able to do it as good as it would have been with the support of others, but I still got something similar to the original concept done. The problem was I got it done a month late. Well, it wasn’t even month late, the date that I had given to finish my part of the project was a bit arbitrary. The whole project still launched at the deadline that was committed to the leadership team. Nonetheless, I was in major trouble over missing the deadline. I was told I’m not a leader, not a team player, etc, etc. My boss was so frustrated with me and I felt horrible.

But then we launched the project and everyone saw it as a success. Even now they refer to this project as an example of something we should do more of.

That wasn’t enough, clearly. At that point my boss had already decided to demote me and move me to a role that has a smaller scope.  While that sucked, it didn’t come with a pay decrease, and I thought the scope was more clear (that I own a certain function) so I was happy about that. My new boss, despite being a white man who thinks he knows everything, at least cared a bit about the actual tasks I would be doing and wanted to be more involved than my former boss who had given up on me. This was all during the end of this pregnancy as well, which ended up being high risk. I was a mess and I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it but it really sucked.

When I came back to work this year my new role was clearly not as well defined as I thought it was. Others were doing what I thought was supposed to be my job and no one cared. I wasn’t actually owning the function at all. I was just going to work on one-off projects, pretty much only the one-off projects that no one else wanted and that would make no sense on a resume in applying for future roles. The actual good projects (in the area I supposedly owned) were being managed by other people on the team. And that hurt a lot. But I didn’t say anything because it wasn’t worth complaining at that point. Clearly they wanted me to leave.

In fact, when I went on maternity leave my former boss said she would join my performance review (with my new boss) since she was my manager the year before. But then she bailed on that meeting where I was given a 2/5 and no stock refresh or raise. While I wasn’t surprised about the low score due to missing the deadline, I also was hurt that she didn’t join this meeting. I finally got up the guts to ask her to meet to discuss the review and consider changing my score to a 3. She met with me and in so many words told me that she wasn’t kicking me out immediately but to look for another job soon. So that was that.

Meanwhile, the (single male) guy who took my former role (who happens to be a friend) is doing a good job but I’m not certain he’s doing a better job than I was doing. He tells me that he misses deadlines too. He was handed a lot of better organization already so he was able to move forward and make progress in a way I never was. Not to sell his talent short, he’s really good at his job. But so much of his success is tied to how well he speaks and how he just has this confidence that I’ll never have. And really I should have managed this guy (we hired him as my fill in when I went on maternity leave the first time) but I was never allowed to manage him so instead he now has my role. And as he’s my friend I’m happy for him but really I wonder did I suck so much at the job and is he that much better?

The reality is that I know how to manage budgets (he is self-admittedly horrible at that.) I took on some of his projects before he was promoted into the role because they should have been mine to lead in the first place and he was ignoring them and I thought they were important for the business. He didn’t care so I took over and I took on too much so that’s on me. But if I was actually set up for success in my role (where I was supposed to be leading the broader function) he would have been my employee and I would have had another employee to manage this area that was important and being ignored. That was a big mistake. But I just wanted to fix the things that mattered. Do meaningful work and add value.

I also hired a bunch of freelancers towards the end that he’s using now… if he didn’t have them I don’t think he would be able to successfully find freelancers to do the work. But I managed to get everything set up well for him to take over. So nice of me. Good thing he’s my friend. I’m rooting for him. But still, man, I feel like a sucker. And that sucks. Sucks to be a sucker.

And the kicker is that even though he was given my former role, he’s actually doing work that should be part of my new role. I’ve never had a clear job or clear objectives so there’s no real way to measure my success outside of if people like me or not (spoiler alert – they don’t.) It’s all sorts of a shit situation and I want to get out. But I also want to get out to somewhere I can start over and really go in and be a new person from the start.

I’m scared I won’t be able to find another job and I’ve started applying but I’m not getting any calls. It’s going to be a long and painful climb to get to my next position. It will probably pay less and who knows if it will be any better. I’d like to believe that a job with an actual job description and clear success criteria will be a little better.

I know I should stay until April. It’s not that far off. I hate the projects I’m working on now and part of me wants to leave before I get too into them and see how the team manages these assignments that no one else wants to do because they suck. I can’t complain really because they pay me a lot so of course I’ll do them. But I’m so over being assigned the work that no one else wants. And I hate it even more when the head of the team tells me I’m doing good work when it doesn’t matter, when I know my boss wants me out. And when I get invited to other meetings that aren’t related to my main role because now it feels like she’s just trying to motivate me enough so I might stay to finish the projects that no one else wants to do.

I know why she doesn’t like me as I’ve been the worst version of myself in this company. In meeting I get frustrated and interrupt people. Because the people who get ahead in this company are the ones who can sound like they know what they’re talking about and be “leaders” but often they are just better at talking and sounding confident. They don’t look at what makes our company different and our unique problems to solve but instead rattle off what other companies do things and seem to be caught up in being just like everyone else and that makes them so smart. Well maybe sometimes it makes sense to copy others but I love to look at problems and figure out how to fix them in a way that makes sense not just how everyone else is solving them in a generic way.

Every time I feel a tinge of frustration now I apply to another company. It doesn’t actually help since no one is calling me, but it feels good to send my resume out to the world. Unfortunately the last four years have done nothing to help me build a resume or make me a desirable candidate. This is why I’m stuck. I mean, maybe someone will hire me eventually. It seems to always happen when it feels like it won’t. When I’ve sent out thousands of resumes. Someone gets confused and thinks I’m a good person to hire. I’ve never gone more than 4 months without a job in the last 15 years. So I guess tenacity gets me hired. But each job seems to be more of a mess than the last one. Yes they may pay more, but I’m more and more suffocated.

I just want to do go good work. To solve problems. To do things in a logical way. To not have to put all of my energy into trying to be anyone but myself.

And at the end of the day I don’t have anyone to talk to about this, other than anonymous people on the internet. Because… my husband doesn’t get it. He knows I’m a hot mess and so it’s clearly my fault. Well, maybe it is. But what do I do about it? It’s my fault but it’s not getting any better. And then I feel depressed, like this deep, horrible depression that’s like a wire ripping through my gut every day because I feel guilty and like a total fuck up at the same time. But what total fuck up has managed to save $1.6M in 15 years? This one. This one right here.

So I can’t breathe again. I sometimes question at what point I call it quits for good. But I have kids now so I can’t make that choice. It just sucks to feel so alone in all of this. I try to tell myself I need to suck it up and just be better. Maybe I can be better. I don’t know. I don’t think I can be. I seem to have proven the hypothesis that I always end up sucking plenty of times over.

Career, Career Change

I Should Update My Blog: What Day Is It Again?

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August 14. Also known, in my head, as 170 days before I can leave my current job and move onto the next one without making a major financial mistake. Or 24 weeks, give or take. That’s achievable. I think. I’m doing work, albeit overwhelmed by the work I’m doing. Nothing I’m doing is revolutionary or will get me a good performance review or pay raise this year, but that doesn’t matter since I’m leaving.

But where to? I’m just tired of being in the same situation again and again. Beyond exhausted. I have no experience. Have been working for over 15 years and yet no relevant experience to apply to other roles. I feel really sick about it. I know that I can take classes and such but that’s not really going to get me prepared for an actual position that requires 5+ years of specific experience. So while it’s nice to think I’m finally getting to the time when I can leave, it’s very not so nice to think about having nowhere to go.

Net worth wise I guess things are going ok. The stock market and particular stocks I’m invested in came down, so family-wise we’re hovering around 2.1M when I was hoping to be closer to 3M this year. It’s still possible we’ll get to 2.5M, for what that’s worth. I’d like to be at 2.5M before leaving this job. If stocks rebound it’s possible. Or I can be under 2M again. Oh well.

Just went on a family trip and spent too much money on hotels that were average or less than average and eating out too much. Now I’m focusing on eating healthy food and trying not to waste anything. Basic stuff, but things I’m bad at so if I can actually use all the food I buy that will be a major win (and good for the environment too.) I’m not that hungry today though…

I’m not sure when I should start applying for the new role. I was thinking I would go all in starting December. Bonus payout and 401k match happen the end of January, and if I start applying in December that means that it’s unlikely I’ll get a job offer and start my new role before Feb 1. I’m working on a few projects through April but by Feb 1 things should be in a decent place so I can leave. It’s not the best time to leave but also they clearly don’t want me to stay so why should I care about what is best for the company right now?

I’m trying to figure out how little I can make and still be able to afford life. Since I’ve earned at least $165k since 2016, it would be hard to earn less than that now (esp since lately I’ve been earning $300k+ with bonus and stock.) But I’m looking at the next few years as a transition period. Can I find a job that pays $150k that is lower level where I can get some experience and have a boss who can help me get relevant experience in a specific field, so I can move up appropriately? If I make $150k and have good benefits then I think that would be acceptable. I just don’t want to be underpaid for my work and experience level either. I don’t know. One company may see $150k as a lot of money and another may see it as the compensation for a relatively junior position. I do think $120k is probably more standard for the roles w/ 2-3 years of experience, which maybe is what I should be aiming for… though I don’t even really have relevant experience for those roles. And most won’t even interview me because they’ll think I want more money (I do) or that I won’t stay long if I can get a position that pays more (maybe true.)

So the big question is do I focus on getting a job that pays $150k (which is already $25k lower than my current base not even including bonus and stock) OR do I use my current experience to try to get a leadership role with comp closer to $250k. Will the $150k role actually be a better fit than the $250k role? Will the company see me as a junior/mid-level employee with potential vs a senior employee who sucks at leading? Maybe one day I can work up to leading but I don’t want to go there now. I think. I can’t focus on being a good mom and household manager and a leader right now. I’m bad enough at leadership as it is. So. $150k seems to be the number. I’d love to make $150k at a large company with good benefits and some kind of stock grant to make up for the difference a little bit. I don’t know if I can go under the $150k though, which limits my options a bit. I wonder if I should just delete half of my LinkedIn so people don’t know how old I am and make it look like I’m younger. People say I look young. But then can I really remove the year I graduated on my resume?

Eh.

I’m doing what I wanted to do. Surviving. But then what?