Why now?

As grateful as we are for our lives in the Bay Area, we’ve always had this dream inside us that would not stop nagging. When I was pregnant with Kuba, our youngest son, I emailed Rob one day with a spreadsheet planning out our savings with the idea of taking the year off when Kuba turned five.  Rob was excited but somewhat doubtful that we could pull it off. I recall talking about it at length that evening. There were many concerns: financial constraints, leaving our jobs, kids’ schools and friends and an infinite number of other challenges.  I started having doubts myself. But, we promised each other that we would come back to the idea at least annually.  We also made the critical decision to start saving in case this dream wasn’t that crazy after all.

The next few years were busy raising three young kids under four and honestly, we were mostly in survival mode.  Once in a while we would dream of the kids being older by looking at friends with older kids with sheer envy not grasping the concept of sleeping-in.  The idea of quitting work and doing something out of ordinary with these humans seemed more tortuous than fun.

As it got closer to Kuba’s 5th birthday though, life became easier and we started talking about what’s next.  Financially, we had been prudent in saving to take time off and still not empty our bank accounts completely.  Work-wise though our exact timeline proved a more challenging. Two years before Kuba’s 5th birthday I started a new and promising job at Airbnb and I was not ready to walk away when he turned five.  So when Kuba’s 5th birthday rolled around, we postponed.

Kuba turned six.  We started discussing the opportunity again.  Did I really need to stay for four years at Airbnb?  Was there ever going to be a perfect time? Will we always find an excuse not to go?  It was simple to find reasons to avoid change. There are so many, I can’t list them all and it takes only a few minutes to talk yourself out of the idea.  It’s easier to stay with the inertia of life, but then we were never about that. I had just launched a major initiative at work and it seemed that professionally my chapter at Airbnb was closing and waiting for another year there wasn’t going to make me happy. Rob was happy at his job at Glassdoor but we knew that Glassdoor itself was on a verge of a major transition.  Kids were still young enough before major drama, but old enough to remember. Financially we had saved enough to feel comfortable with our decision. It was time to pull the trigger.