Why We Took a Quarter Life Retirement

I figure a year into our trip, it's about time to give everyone a little background on why we even came in the first place.  I can't speak for John, perhaps he owes everyone a post of his own, but I personally saw it as sort of a quarter-life retirement with a little bit of young life crisis and some gap year thrown in.  With 3 preschool aged children of course.  This doesn't really strike me as strangely as it strikes most, since most of my life has been done out of order anyway.  I was never one to follow predetermined structure.  Not that I didn't want to, lest you think I'm trying to paint myself as some sort of free spirit struggling to break the confines of societal expectations.  I won't say I love societal expectations either, but I've always craved them, like any good little neurotic co-dependent would.  Most of my life has revolved around grades and scales and stopwatches, but I'm one of those crash and burn types.  The type who starves themselves for 5 days and then binges on the weekend, or who gets straight A's the first semester, and drops out the next.  All told, I've dropped out of school 5 times, probably gained and lost hundreds of pounds and attempted to master no less than 4 instruments and 5 sports.  I've also written the first chapter of about 4 different novels.  Point being, I'd do just about anything for a pat on the back, which is probably why I couldn't stand the thought of NOT graduating college, even after I was married with a kid.  So forget the life plan where you graduate college, do your gap year, get married, flourish in your career, buy a dream home and then decorate a nursery.  We got engaged the day my husband started his first full-time job, got married 8 weeks later and were surprised exactly 9 months and 6 days after our wedding by a beautiful little bundle of colic, skin rashes and food allergies.  Did I say that?  I meant joy.  Bundle of joy.

Anyways, since I was hell-bent on finishing college, but the only way to stop the bundle of joy from screaming was to make sure he was permanently attached to my boob, I wrote my final papers with a laptop propped up sideways so I could lay next to my nursing newborn.  Of course I couldn't stop there, because a walking inferiority complex is never satisfied.  Once the bundle of joy was old enough to start putting everything in his mouth, the screaming abated somewhat and I moved right on to graduate school.  Somehow part time turned into full-time and one bundle of joy became two and pretty soon I was the only student racing out of class to nurse my baby during breaks.  My husband had, in the meantime, moved his way from lowly barista to store manager, which meant he was doing pretty much the same thing (making sure you got your sugar-free no-whip, double tall vanilla soy latte in less than 97 seconds) only for 60 hours a week rather than 40.  By the time I was ready to graduate, bundle #3 was ready to make his way into the world, I was working way too many thankless and unpaid hours as a counseling intern who ended up organizing my boss' file cabinets far more often than I did any counseling.  John would leave at 3:30 AM to open the store and come back in time to pass off kids before I went to my internship or night classes.  I came back from night classes in time to put the bundles back to sleep for the 2nd or 3rd time with about 6 hours to sleep before they were up to greet the sun.  Then there was the fact that the resounding consensus I heard from every mom with 3 or more kids was that 3 children was where you descend into a murky mom-haze from which you won't emerge until all your kids can sleep through the night and fix themselves breakfast.  You'll apparently wake up after your first morning of 10 uninterrupted hours of sleep wondering who you are and where the last 4-15 years of your life went (depending on how many more kids you have).  One mom also described having 3 young kids as being the same as her natural labor-agonizing pain somehow tempered by your body's natural happy bonding drugs that it produces for these sorts of occasions.  I have had 3 all natural labors and, while they were beautiful in their own right, I have no desire to experience them for years on end.  Also, the whole dissasociative experience doesn't sound great to me.  Also, let's go back to the hubby's 60 hour workweeks and my graduate degree that gave me the opportunity to keep doing my thankless internship work for about as much as I used to make babysitting.

I didn't want to see John only while trading off kids so we could both work more hours than we wanted at jobs we didn't like.  I also didn't want to give up on work I know I would love if I got the chance to leave the file room.  I didn't want to miss the bundles' entire childhood because I was in a sleep-deprived mom-haze.  I also didn't want to give up working part time and never have a reprieve from the aforementioned mom-haze.  I didn't want to spend the kids' most formative years just "managing" them-making sure everyone made it through the day alive and fed.  I didn't want to turn down reading books and building block towers because I was walking the baby to sleep or dinner needed to be made.    

And like most things in life, there's always have an alternative.  We could have searched for an alternatives in the US.  There were definitely ways to slow down what we were doing.  We could have made a lot of tradeoffs, but instead we decided to think outside the box and find some way where we didn't have to give up any of our biggest priorities.

And I think it's worked.  John has had a chance to bond with the kids and has given me a chance to regain my self and sanity without mom-haze swallowing me whole.  We're a way better and more balanced parenting team.  We have the time and energy to take care of ourselves and consequently have the time and energy to be present and focused with the kids.  I never have to multitask and so I'm a mom rather than a manager.  We're so blessed in so many ways and being out of the US keeps us constantly reminded of that fact.  We've met so many amazing and interesting people and been able to see ourselves through the eyes of people who haven't known us our whole lives.  Also, it's 70 and sunny outside and I'm snacking on fresh pineapple and sipping water straight from a coconut.  In your face Chicago,

The rat race, the American Dream, keeping up with the Jones', or whatever else you call it....it's way over-rated.

Here's to doing life a little out of order.