On the road we never questioned the value of our day, the worthiness of how we were living, or judged ourselves in the light of how our time was spent. What was measured was the amount of happiness, the lack of anxiety, and the quality of sleep. At home, as much as I tried to hang on to these feelings, I began to feel them slip away. I made Thanksgiving dinner and baked Christmas cookies. We hosted a cocktail party for fifty. In the city we had meetings with colleagues and dinners with friends. We pruned the yard and prepared the house for winter. We made another bid on the company in New England, but the business was sold to someone else. I wrote an article for a travel magazine while Sandy did research for a campground guide. Together we developed a plan for a series of books we might produce for a publisher. All of this took place in the first month we were home. And still we were pressed, by well-meaning friends, about what we were really going to do, as if we were not doing anything at all. Certainly it seemed, from the reactions to us, that what we were doing didn’t count. Inevitably the probing led to the question of how we were going to make money. We needed to make money, and we did: I from writing, Sandy from consulting. Yet that didn’t seem “real” somehow. Plain and simple: If it didn’t result in a paycheck, it didn’t count for much. That’s why Martha Stewart’s Thanksgiving was a national event while mine was just a turkey.
We had difficulty getting people to believe, and at the same time reinforcing to ourselves, that we really really really had been thoroughly and deeply happy in that $35,000, 240-square-foot motor home. Living in it might not be the exact way we wanted to spend the rest of our lives (maybe it was?), but it made crystal clear the fact that the alternative—working crazy hours to support a house we had very little time to be in—wasn’t the design for the future. He who dies with the most toys is still dead, no? Who was rationalizing and who was in denial? Were we trying to make the best of a new situation? Was there a degree of jealousy in the people we talked to? Finally, at what point and how do you disengage from “society” or at least get rewired? This was our new quest: to be able to be in the world of business but not of it. To continue to be mentally stimulated by ideas and have a so-called life of the mind, but not to sell our souls to do it. Thus began our search for a new middle ground, some previously unknown emotional region where life would be engaging enough yet at the same time would not require a constant flow of adrenaline. I wanted very much to reduce my own dependence on outside stimulation, and by extension its evaluation.
How do you know how you’re doing when the report cards stop coming? How were we to measure plans for our new life if not in dollars and cents? We’re a nation of reportniks. All through school we are graded; then, once we’re in the “real” world, annual reviews serve much the same purpose: to tell us how we’re doing compared with our peers and according to the rules of the organization. Over the years I had come to accept these positive reviews as a sign of achievement. I had done well, I received raises. Some years I even made out extremely well in the bonus pool. My last year’s bonus had been my best ever, yet by that point I had mentally checked out. I knew I was no longer giving my best performance, and yet the report card told me otherwise. Perhaps it was simply a case of jet lag: I was living off an earlier hot streak. Or perhaps the evaluations meant nothing at all and the money was a tasty but untrustworthy measurement. Could I live life in a pass/fail system, or would it be too bland?
* * *
Hunting and pecking our way around the unmapped world of refashioning a life, we continued to be haunted by images of Santa Fe. Needing a reality check, we returned (by plane) for five days in January. We made business appointments and social plans, attended theater, and roamed the galleries. On Sandy’s birthday we soaked in an outdoor hot tub for two as the ice froze on the deck around us, then had full-body massages. It was always sunny, and the food was as good as we remembered, the art even better. Opportunities and connections seemed to materialize. Comforts and possibilities were everywhere. Energized and emboldened, we returned east, home for now, to continue making the necessary arrangements and rearrangements for a life.
We had changed. We had distinctly new relationships with time and money, for instance. The diet of taking time in larger portions, not broken up into little bitty bites, that we’d first become aware of back in Canada, was tremendously satisfying and successful. I had always watched my watch as I tried to get from one meeting to the next, one part of town to the other. I’d sweat it out while the taxi meter ticked away. I’d never felt I had enough time. Somehow I was more in sync now, not fighting the clock. When I had a stream of appointments in the city, I’d leave the house on time, then walk or take public transportation to my destination. I always seemed to arrive early. Instead of chopping up the interim time into watched minutes as they ticked away, I’d read the paper or relax. I saved time, money, and aggravation.
Money still mattered, but almost unconsciously we made do with less. One day I agreed to answer a telephone survey. After questions about my age, my education level, and our previous year’s household income, I was asked whether I’d purchased a pair of shoes for fifty dollars or more in the previous year. I thought about it and realized I hadn’t. The surveyor was stunned. She had to end the interview. I no longer fit my own profile, apparently. Sandy and I enjoyed, and had the time, to entertain our friends at home. New Yorkers love having someone make lunch or dinner for them. It’s considered a novelty. Coincidentally, it costs less. Our clothing expenses all but disappeared. (While cleaning out my drawers, I unearthed a lifetime supply of pantyhose, among other things.) We discovered the deliciously illicit sensation of going to midweek bargain movie matinees and buying half-price tickets to Broadway shows. The need for recreational shopping, as an antidote to stress, was gone. Since we didn’t know where we’d be living, buying things for the house seemed foolish.
There were still many questions—the final results were not in. We knew with certainty, however, that we were happy, lucky, and grateful to be where we were. Wherever that was. If life was not yet neatly tied up in a ribbon, we understood that enjoying the process of living is worthwhile.
I kept remembering a Spanish proverb I’d always liked.
LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE.
And it has nothing to do with money.
The Beginning
T he winter following our trip was the snowiest on record in the Northeast. Our steep driveway was graced with a hundred inches or so. Susie looked good in white. Sandy says he’s glad he married a woman with “the shoveling gene,” since every time a few flakes fell, I was happy to be out there moving the mess. It was about the only thing that got me out of the house. I spent the winter, between shoveling episodes, writing this book. Shoveling of a different sort, some might say, but be kind.
When you’re a book editor, people always ask whether you want to write. In fact, aside from a few newspaper articles, it had never occurred to me, until an editor friend encouraged me to think about it before we left. I kept our conversation to myself until I produced a draft. For the first time since leaving my job eight months earlier, I held a manuscript in my hands. It was mine, and it felt great. Together with my editor, I worked on polishing it, putting on the finishing touches. It was odd to be the recipient of her instructions, to be on the other side of the desk, but it suited my newly articulated desire to apply myself in a variety of directions.
For all those years Sandy and I had both worn our blinders firmly in place and were excellent workhorses. We believed in one way of working and accepted the way of life that it produced. Now we were moving around more freely, spending more time with those we cared about, and opening our minds to new ideas about work, even if that meant having fewer material compensations. One thing writing taught me is that I still love to work, to produce results, to achieve goals. One thing I learned about writing is that sometimes only a cliché will do—that’s how they got to be clichés. Time is money. We want to grow rich together in years of satisfaction, hours of f
ulfillment, and minutes of pleasure.
Through this cold winter, while I wrote the book, Sandy gathered information, wrote letters, and made contact with people in Santa Fe, the place that continued to capture our imagination. We often reminded each other how bright the sun and sky were there. When we went for those exploratory meetings in January, it was cold, but the light was just as we’d remembered it. Since we returned, some of those connections have yielded concrete results, others haven’t. We went through a spell of severe disappointment. We recognized that we might have to begin from scratch, whatever venture we settled on, rather than team up with someone already in business. We also heard about opportunities in areas that interested us that we’d never considered before as businesses: food, gardening, and seminars. Starting a new business is more difficult than partnering with others who already have some sort of infrastructure. It would take longer to get up and running, but in the end, hopefully, we would have what we thought we wanted: something of our own.
The process of learning to live with fluctuation, with uncertainty and unpredictability, was vexing for us. At the same time we knew it was at the core of what we were trying to achieve: We were going to learn to be flexible, even if it killed us. Ultimately, as studious as we were about laying various foundations for projects we might undertake, we couldn’t separate the doing from the being any longer. We could test the waters long distance only for so long—soon we were going to have to jump in. If Santa Fe turned out not to be “it,” we’d pack up the Sue and keep driving.
* * *
Eventually the scales of time tipped in our favor—daylight returned, and the snow finally melted. We began to do the mother of all spring cleanings to get the house in shape to put on the market. Before the trip I could never have imagined selling it. Then I saw the possibility of living elsewhere and admitted it might be possible to leave our homey old house. I recanted somewhat after spending the winter tucked cozily under its eaves, gazing at the two-story stone fireplace on the one hand and the frozen lake on the other while I wrote. I felt reattached to this nest. Then one afternoon as I worked, the cats dozed, and Sandy was out, I heard a tremendous “boom.” My first thought was that the roof had given way from the weight of all the snow and ice. Pete and Norm looked up from their naps at me, annoyed and startled, as if to say “Okay, you’re the human, you check it out.” By the time I was mobile, I heard water gushing from the upstairs bathroom into our newly renovated kitchen below. I recruited every pot, pan, and bowl I could find as our carefully handpainted floor disappeared beneath inches of water. I bailed as fast as I could. The cats came by to see what great new game I was playing but doubled back hastily when they saw the wet chaos. I dialed Sandy. No answer. I dialed a friend and got his machine. I was about to dial another when the phone went dead. For all I knew about how houses worked, this was the last thing that happened before it would incinerate itself. Just then Sandy came home, took one look at the cascading water, made a U-turn, and ran to the basement. In minutes the flood stopped. So did my undying love for the house. That was it. I wanted a divorce.
Over and over again we contemplated and discussed being separated from our friends. My father made dire predictions that long-distance relationships would flicker and die. On the contrary, we decided, friends who were really friends would always be with us, no matter where we were. We kept up the habit of e-mailing new and old friends: Gladys and Lyman spent six weeks this spring flightseeing “outside,” Betty’s been on QVC three times, and John and Joel are visiting us from Santa Fe this summer. “Networking,” we know, can be attended to electronically and on the regular visits we plan to make back to New York City. One evening we had a long conversation with my parents, explaining to them the reasons we wanted to spend time in another part of the country working for ourselves. I know it wasn’t easy for these octogenarians to understand, but they stood by us and wished us godspeed. We promised to spend the summer with them in the East.
I ask everyone I meet whether they have any advice for us, if they know anyone who’s quit their job, moved to another part of the country, rewritten their lives. Mostly people volunteer stories about someone they know who’s retired to Arizona or San Diego or even Santa Fe, and they give us an emotional pat on the back for trying something new. I think of what we learned from the ranger at Mount Ranier about trees, twisting themselves beneath the bark to strengthen themselves against crises. This voluntary revision in our lives is surely no crisis, but it has caused me to pull myself together, take note of where my strengths are, shore up my natural defenses, and come to grips with my weaknesses. It has also allowed me to acknowledge that some of the things I loved as a child—being outdoors, learning about the world, doing new things, having a best friend at my side when I wake up in the morning—are worth preserving and cultivating as an adult. We know we can do our jobs. Now we want to be happy and learn some new things.
* * *
We will leave here in the fall, before darkness sets in, drive the Sue out west and stay in it until we find a place to live. The world is vast and beautiful. I want to be in it, of it. This is the beginning.
Every journey has a secret destination of which the traveler is unaware.
—Martin Buber
Who knows?
With gratitude:
to Leslie for her inspiration
and faith
to Cherise for her patience
and skill
to Richard for his calmness
under pressure of all kinds.
First We Quit Our Jobs Page 20