By my calculation, and the number of dishes daily, it has now been almost a year since we began our huge endeavor of living and working together 24/7. Well, he does the work I just have to now put up with him in my space during the day. I really thought we would have more ups and downs as we drastically changed our day to day but as the title suggests we are just chugging along.
I will say this about our situation if you have the ability to be with your spouse daily, do it. I have actually seen my anxiety go down by him being home and he is much happier. Not to say he wasn’t happy in what he was doing before he became his own boss full time, but it was a lot of work to juggle so many projects at once while also working for a large company. If you work in an office you will know that you have a lot of meetings to discuss what you need to do in a different meeting. It takes up a lot of “working” time and you can sometimes feel you are not productive.
Aside from the fact that I seem to get roped into doing some type of work or administrative things for him on a weekly basis, it really hasn’t been that bad to be home full time together. I will, however, be encouraging an assistant as his workload begins to increase this year because that is not something I want to ever do – work for my husband.
I applaud those who work with their spouse, but it is not a path we will ever go down. It took a lot of work after ten years of marriage to make us leave the work at the door each day. I don’t mind being a sounding board but I knew very early on in his career I did not want our life to be consumed by work-related things. I wanted to know that we could just have conversations and talk life whenever we wanted, I knew that was going to be the only thing that got us through the ups and downs of entrepreneur life. We needed to have common interests we talked about and experienced together, everything could not always and should not always be business. I learned that when you begin to go down that path, you begin to forget why you got together in the first place and why you enjoy each other’s companionship.
I recently heard someone say that they wake up every single day and CHOSE to be with their husband and vis versa. The document we signed ten years ago is just that, a document, it does not mean that you will stay with your partner, as we have seen around us numerous times. I want to know that each morning when we wake up we both WANT to be in this for the long run and sometimes the mixing of business and personal can cause that to slip away. Your mind becomes consumed with, what’s next? Your focus drifts from building a solid relationship with common goals to seeing dollar signs and how to obtain more and more in business and financially, and not in building a life.
It is no secret to those around us that when we got married ten years ago we had NOTHING! Shocking, I know, but it is the truth. We had hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. We had car loans. We had zero dollars saved to buy a home. We didn’t even entertain the idea of having a home for years. We had no money to go on vacations, let alone a honeymoon. Fast forward to today and you would never believe we were those kids, but here is the catch, we didn’t obtain what we have with a “quick dollar scheme,” my husband and I worked hard in our careers and we worked to make sure we stayed on a path to get as far away from that early on situation as we could. However, all money talk aside, if we were not happy then we would not be happy now. I am literally speaking from experience and telling you honestly that, money does not make you happy and it does not make life easier. It is that simple, do not for one second think that if you can save $5,000 you will be better. That 5 turns to 10 turns to 20 and it never ends. You have to be happy with nothing to be happy with everything you could ever imagine in life.
Yes, financial freedom makes life a bit easier, but it does not make you happier if the foundation you have created with someone is not happy and solid. Yes, struggling financially can cause a lot of strain on so many aspects of life, but you should not constantly be looking for how to make a quick dollar because you will throw away so many opportunities along the path to obtain that dollar. If you have built your marriage on these two things, in my opinion, it will not last.
YOU have to make the happy that you want in life, simple as that. Money will not do that, but a happy husband and a happy wife enjoying doing the simple things in life will bring you all you need to have, and that is why we made the leap a year ago to be at home together and for Ian to do what he has always wanted to do in life and we have not once looked at how we can make more, we just do life daily and it all comes together at the end of the day …
networking also doesn’t hurt in obtaining this life, but thats a topic for another day.
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