A day in the life

I'm absorbed in the process of starting my own design business at the same time I'm winding down from 30 years of working at Security Title in Phoenix. The real estate meltdown has affected my entire family. I was just laid off, my son is struggling to keep his real estate business going after 7 years of phenomenal success, my first husband is losing his job as a real estate instructor, and my husband is idling in retirement when he would normally be building a custom home or two. My best friend and my daughter-in-law are both hanging on to jobs in escrow but not with any sense of security. We worked through the 1980 recession and the S&L meltdown and the 2006 boom, but the current market conditions appear to be the most extreme in our lifetime.

The biggest lesson I have to learn in starting my own business is how to balance my work and home life. I've always been a little bit compulsive about working. In my younger days, I worked as if success was the be all and end all of my existence. For the past 11 years, I worked part time, and gradually came to terms with the fact that I had made life choices that precluded my obtaining the level of corporate recognition I longed for. As a little girl, I dreamed of growing up to be vice president of something rather than dreaming of my wedding day. However, when one marries a man who lives 100 miles from one's office and settles down to working 3 days a week, there's a career price to pay. Although I would make the same choice all over again, I spent a lot of time and tears coming to terms with the cost of my choices.

Actually, as I think about it, that theme has occurred before in my life. When I married the first time, at the age of 19, I failed completely to understand the scope of that decision. I knew I wasn't wildly in love, but he was fun to be with and I was tired of school. It was May, 1965, and his name was up on the draft. A few months later, the marriage exemption for the draft was dropped, but we got under the wire. As a wedding present, his parents offered to pay for a trip to Europe or a down payment on a house. We chose the trip to Europe, of course. In order to leave the country, he had to appear before the draft board - at which time he was declared 4-F (ineligible for the draft) because of a minor health issue. I don't know when it finally dawned on me that I had made a life-altering decision as if it were a choice of going to the movies or not.

A couple of years later a friend had a new baby and declared us god-parents. One afternoon while baby-sitting for this cuddly new baby, I decided that having a baby would be a lovely idea. Never mind the fact that I was a junior at Arizona State University and had every intention of graduating. So I argued the case, stopped my birth control pills, and promptly got pregnant. A few months into my pregnancy, I began to realize the monumental irreversibility of the decision I had made. Not only was I going to have a baby, but I truly wanted my children to be close in age as my sister and I were. To that end, the decision to have the first baby necessarily included the decision to have another. And thus, my two sons. My point is definitely not to regret the having a baby decision. It's only to illustrate that I never anticipated any life-altering consequences to any of my decisions.