Yesterday was my last day of work at D2M. It was happy and sad. I worked side by side with Andy for almost 5 years. I decided to leave because my husband was invited to be the next Ambassador on his team to represent the Mountain View office in London for one year. He had similar opportunities in the past, but either the project wasn't interesting or the country wasn't interesting.
One weekend in February we were very absolute in deciding we would no longer pursue these types of opportunities. We love our life here and this is where we should be. The next day I'm going through my usual Monday morning tasks, have lunch with coworkers and then as I'm prepping the last bits for our weekly staff meeting, I get a message, "so someone from the london office just stopped by my desk and asked if i wanted to do 6 months there...starting in march...flexible...no joke...but i'm really not sure what to do now." I was in shock.
Hubby and I ran together that night and talked it over the entire run. It all came down to this: we will never regret going, but we will always regret if we stayed. It was finally the right project for him and the right city for us. So we decided then and there we would move to London. The next several weeks were many roller coasters of emotions: excitement, fear, abandonment, nervous etc. and about everything: leaving my amazing boss, moving out of our great Eichler place, not working for 6 months and moving to a new city where I know no one. But then I remember that I've done this all before.
Five years ago Hubby and I moved to California together from St. Louis. All within a few months we moved, got married, made new friends and I got a job. So we own more things now, Ok. So we have a lot of friends here now, Ok. So London is huge compared to Palo Alto, Ok. Well, I've done this before and people do it all the time. I am fortunate that Hubby's work is so amazing that they literally have a team of people that relocate families all the time and all over the globe. I don't need to be an expert in this, I just need to go with the flow and provide the information they need. Excellent!
So 6 months turned into 1 year. It works for a variety of reasons, but we decided we should do the 1 year option because 6 months just doesn't give us enough time. It's not enough time for him to be fully integrated with his team, it doesn't give us enough time to travel all over Europe and it doesn't give us enough time to enjoy the experience at a leisurely pace. We'd be so rushed in 6 months.
April 14th had a special meaning to us in 2006 because that's when we moved to California. Now that same date in 2011 will not be know as our 5 year anniversary in California, but the date we moved to London! It's amazing how things work out when you have the patience to let all the layers unfold. We joked back in February when we thought we were leaving in March and said, "How funny would it be if to get through this process, the move dated changed to April 14th! and then it did. :)
The dream is now a reality and I cannot wait to see where this ride takes us.
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