The big move: leaving my job!!

   Those of you who are close to me may already know I made a huge decision last week. This was a choice that was both terrifying and exhilarating to make all at the same time. In a time where in society the most frightening thing could be losing a job, I left mine. Truth be told, I was clogging up the corporate works, at this point in my life not feeling any ambition to move forward to a more challenging position but not feeling particularly fulfilled with my current one. We also needed to finally answer the question: Maine or Massachusetts?
 The question of where our family belongs together has lingered on and on for quite some time. Circumstances found us splitting our time between the two places, me with Jax in Massachusetts and Dean with his job in Maine. We were traveling back and forth, hoping to figure out where we belonged, all while hoping to make whatever transition as easy as possible on Jax. I was (am) biased to Massachusetts: my entire family is there, the schools are great. I like to call it White Picket Fence Land. Moving us back to Maine meant living where the nearest 'good' grocery store is 45 miles away, off the Mountain. I'm not convinced by the school (yes, one school), few job opportunities, and there is a lot of Small Town Syndrome that goes around up there.
  Then a little hitch in our plans came about: Bella. We were delighted to discover we would be adding to our family. But the questions remained, except they started sounding more like "what in the heck are we going to do?". Choices in maternity care and better insurance coverage kept me in Massachusetts until Bella was born. And as the twelve weeks I planned on taking off from work has been winding down, we started to weigh what really matters for our family. The answer for us, is time. The long winter season lends Dean a more free work schedule. Time together as a family is a precious commodity we are going to get so much of this winter that we could possibly find ourselves tired of it- but after nearly two years of back and forth its what we crave.
 Choosing not to stay on with my work is terrifying, but so exciting at the same time. I worked for a great company, but managing a department in a grocery store is anything but glamorous, and is unforgiving when a priority is family time. Hours start early and end late, and the busiest days for customers are the weekends and holidays. Add that to having to depend largely on the reliability and emotions of a college student workforce- not necessarily a bad thing as a whole but we all know the phrases about one bad apple spoiling the bunch. I was told my position would be changing, possibly making me be on the sales floor to begin work by 5am (with an exclusively breastfed infant? And Dean sometimes not getting off work until midnight?). On top of this, Dean is a classically trained chef, working at the executive level. A move for him would almost certainly mean a job in Boston- putting him there 100 hours a week and only perpetuating us never having time together. Doable? Sure. But our willingness to push the envelope of our family's limits is done.
 We're now officially in the mountains, figuring out how we'll settle in for the winter, in Maine. And part of that wild frenzy of how's and what if's: how is this going to work? What on Earth am I going to do with my extremely high-energy, almost five year old and an infant, regularly snowed in, for an entire winter in Maine??? (yes, winters here are longer, colder, and snowier  than a lot of places. We can only sled so much). How long will Jax ask if we are returning to Massachusetts? He has taken the brunt of this back and forth. What about preschool for him? Jax was attending the Taj Mahal of schools in Massachusetts- a fully accredited preschool, pre K, and kindegarten which practically promised to have children reading novels and solving world hunger by the first grade.
 A lot of questions float ahead of us but the one thing for certain is this: the pressure is off. And it is wonderful. Yes, I'll need to do some kind of work, things may be tight, but now I may even be able to take some time to really ask myself what I'd like to enjoy doing- and how I can creatively do that in a way we can healthily balance the quality family knit we're so happy to have achieved