How the things you own end up owning you (Doug’s Story)
I was living the American Dream … at least I thought I was.
Wife who is a full-time mom and 2 teenage kids (1 boy, 1 girl)
3,800 square foot house on 3 acres in Oregon wine country
2 dogs
2 cats
8 chickens
Both of our families live in the local area
Both kids in an elite private school
OK … What’s the problem?
The situation I was describing earlier is the dream life for lots of people.
A big house, land, family and pets. I thought that this meant I had arrived at the top of life’s mountain.
After all, isn’t this what everybody wants to achieve?
Up until April 19th of 2020, I thought the answer to this question was yes.
Then it happened …
On April 20th of 2020, I received a 30-minute meeting notice on my calendar with no subject. (Readers with corporate jobs should know what’s coming next)
When I joined the call, our new Chief Information Officer informed me that my job had been eliminated due to budget cuts. 30 seconds later HR joined the call, and 5 minutes after that my network access was terminated.
So there I was in the middle of COVID with the American Dream and no way to pay for it.
#Anxiety
Fast Forward 3 Years
As I’m writing this, roughly 3 years and 3 months have passed since then.
Our financial situation has re-stabilized, my wife has returned to her career in corporate procurement and things seem like they should be back on track.
The only thing is that the disruption I experienced in 2020 changed me forever.
I realized that any of us with corporate jobs are only one call away from being unemployed.
I also realized that our lifestyle cost had steadily crept up to the point where both my wife and I needed to have corporate jobs in order to pay for our house, pets, property and school for our kids.
Backstory
I am a part of the generational cohort known as ‘Gen X’
One of the things that came across very prominently with my upbringing is that there was a ‘right’ way and a ‘wrong’ way to go through life. Because of this, people pleasing and emotional repression were two of the most heavily conditioned characteristics of my personality.
I wanted to do things the ‘right’ way so I studied hard and earned honor roll + national honor society and achieved Eagle Scout in high school. I didn’t want to go into debt, so I went to Junior College + transferred to Portland State University. (partially paid for with the GI Bill from joining the Marine Corps)
After graduating, I started working at Intel Corp, and bought a house + got married during that first year of my career. The next year, I enrolled in graduate school to earn my Master of Business Administration (MBA).
After graduating, we moved into a bigger house and started trying to have kids. We ended up with a daughter and a son plus three cats.
This was right about when the 2008 Financial Crisis happened and the home equity + financial assets we had been accumulating suddenly vanished.
Fortunately, my corporate career was going well so we decided that my wife could stay at home with the kids full-time and that we would move into a bigger house with a back yard and a view.
When our kids got to school age, we sent them to a local pre-school and progressed them to a catholic private school that was recommended by a number of our friends.
As they progressed in school, some of the class sizes started getting too small for adequate social interaction so we moved our daughter to another higher-end private school.
Right about this time, we decided it would be great to get a house on property so we moved into an apartment, rented out our prior house and planned on using a home equity line of credit to finance the purchase of our dream home.
We also decided that this was a good time to get a puppy.
When we found our place it was beautiful. A 3,800 square foot house on 3 acres with big south-facing picture windows overlooking an oak grove on the back 2 acres of the property.
Then, less than a month after we moved in I received a notice that I was being separated from Intel and had 2 months to try and find another job.
Fortunately, I landed a role with Lattice Semiconductor as their Program Management Office director for their Chief Information Officer.
The next 2 years were a flurry of saying ‘yes’ to everything that my boss needed … The result was that I took on a lot of high-risk, high stress projects and traveled a lot to do whatever was needed to make the organizational turnaround successful.
This brings us up to April 20th of 2020 when everything in my life went sideways…
What it All Means
After a tremendous amount of self-reflection (and therapy) I came to realize that I had completely neglected to live any form of youth in favor of getting a jumpstart on my life of conforming to other people’s expectations of what I should want.
I didn’t travel … Family vacations or work trips were the extent of my exposure to other people and the world.
I didn’t make ‘young people’ mistakes … I was so focused on the straight and narrow path that I never developed the emotional intelligence and self-awareness that comes from the chaotic path of youth.
Further, once I had the big house, pets, kids in school, etc. it consumed literally all of my time.
My life had become a treadmill of working and hustling to take care of all the things that I had spent my life toiling to accumulate and create.
This leaves very little room for seeing new places, meeting new people and exploring new business ideas.
Where I’m Going Now
I am currently in the process of downsizing my life to only the people, assets and activities that bring value to me as the person I want to be. (Ex. Not necessarily the person that other people think I should be)
If you are reading this and have not yet become entangled in the ‘rat race’ I highly recommend to keep your life light in regard to social and financial entanglements. Figure out what you really want for you so that the time and money you invest is out of genuine love instead of attempting to please other people or follow the ‘right’ way of doing things.
If you are reading this and are currently entangled in the ‘rat race’ like me, now is the time to think deeply about what you really want with your life.
What is really important?
What relationships create energy for you?
What opportunities are you missing by spending so much time attending to what you already have?
Highly entangled lives don’t change overnight. (And influencers who try to pretend they can are quite frankly, morons)
Start making small changes and compound them over time.
Do the thing …
If my story and perspective resonates, please follow me here on Medium and subscribe to my podcast — People First Leaders (Both are free)
