Meet A Goode Life

Welcome! Come on in! You may not be aware, but you are reading the very first blog post of Living A Goode Life. OR…there’s also a good chance you’re my mom and you’re the only person reading this. (Thanks Mom!)

On the off chance you’re NOT my mom, let me give you a little background on me and what this blog is all about. I am a 30-something woman, wife, mother, and financial professional – in that order. I am a planner of all things, Type A, and Enneagram 1 to the hilt. My husband and I have been married for 10-plus years and are doing our darnedest to raise two decent human beings in the process.

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago in an average middle-class family. We always had enough for everything we needed, and my parents even “squirreled away” (that’s what my Dad called saving) some money for a few extras. I was only slightly terrified to be sent off to college (Nokia brick-phone in hand) to earn a degree so I could do the same for my own eventual family.

So that’s what I did. I hunkered down (in between weekends full of poor college choices) to earn a couple of degrees at a top-ranked accounting program. I came out of school and started my career at one of those infamous “Big 4” accounting firms. I happily traded much of my evening and weekend hours in hopes of the elusive year-end bonus. After a few years of what I’ll affectionately call “accounting bootcamp”, I transitioned to an even more infamous Fortune 50 retailer (the one that has 8,000+ locations on nearly every American street corner… a little trivia for you). During that time, my title and salary grew almost as quickly as my ego. I steadily climbed the iconic corporate ladder. All the while, I was also the point-person for growing babies in our house, so I popped out two kids during those years as well. I was proud to be a poster-mom for working motherhood – blazing new trails in flexible work arrangements and demanding more mothers’ rooms in our office by day, getting a home-cooked dinner on the table by night. I had made it. I had built a well-oiled machine.

But… I was also beat. Flat-out exhausted. Our American work culture is not built for two working parents (or even one), save for the few shining stars that have figured it out on the west coast. My company was certainly not a pioneer in this space. I had reached “burnout”. The bottom of my joy bucket had fallen out somewhere between work and home, and I didn’t have time to stop and pick up the pieces. Was I doing this right? Was I missing something?

So, I did the unthinkable. Okay, maybe it’s not unthinkable. Maybe most of us only think of it as a pipedream. I made the immensely difficult decision, with a very supportive husband at my side, that I would leave the workforce to come home to our 1 and 5-year-old. I would leave a career I genuinely loved for the betterment of our homelife. And after years of rigid family financial planning to figure out how to make that work, I turned in my corporate life. I walked away from the window office, the perfectly ergonomic leather chair, and the six-figure salary. In return, I turned on the stay-at-home-mom life I’d been dreaming of – the homemade PBJs, the bus stop pick-ups, and the ability to mindlessly stand at the school copy machine making endless copies for my kid’s elementary school teacher. And to be honest, our lives were better. A lot better. Shockingly, we didn’t miss the money. But we had planned it that way. And we realized what life could be like when both spouses aren’t juggling the corporate churn. We had breathing room in the evenings and more margin on the weekends. Our weeknight dinners were calmer, my husband and I had more time to connect, and I wasn’t rushing the kids to constantly get out the door. This was worth it. This feeling didn’t have a price tag.

But a couple years in, the churn started to creep in again. It was a different machine this time. It was sports and activities and school events. And it sure seemed like every kid in this town had at least two birthday parties a year. Is that possible? And do you know how many boxes of Girl Scout cookies can fit in my dining room? 1,200. Tweeeelve huuundred. We felt the speed of life creeping up again.

We now found ourselves yearning for more time away from our busy suburban lives. The desire to “get away” was near constant. We dreamed of slowing down. And not in retirement. Like, today – in our 30s. Now if you’re asking yourself, can’t you just stop doing “all the things”? Yes, of course, we could. In theory. But when you’re surrounded by the constant hum of “all the things”, amplified by social media constantly telling you how everyone else is doing “all the things” too, it’s hard to shut it down. That’s what the suburbs had turned into for me – a constant pull to do everything always. I was exhausted…again.

And then an opportunity came up we couldn’t ignore. The supposed and elusive “dream job” my husband always yearned for. Only it was 1,400 miles away in Idaho. Away from my entire family, but closer to his. And in the tiny, rural town he grew up in – one that we never considered moving to. Let me be clear, when I say “tiny” and “rural”, I mean “TINY” and “RURAL”. But it seemed like the slower speed of life we were yearning for. Something was calling us there. So we said yes. Or to be truthful, I think I just never said no. The next 4 months was a flurry of house buying, house selling (by the way, I don’t recommend that order!), breaking friends’ and family’s hearts, and generally turning our lives upside down.

So here I am, writing from Small Town, USA. I look forward to sharing my journey from there to here with plenty of crossroads in between. It’s a story in transcending the corporate hustle, choosing joy, and trying to find our “good” life.

My hope for this blog is that it encourages you to consider what your “good” life looks like. Do you have to quit your job to be happy? Or move to the middle of nowhere? Gosh, I hope not. And I truly don’t think so. That’s just my story. (Spoiler alert: that’s why this blog is called “A Goode Life”, not “The Goode Life”. There’s not just one “good life”.) My guess is that most of us are already where we need to be to find our “good life”. We just need to peel back the layers to find where it’s hiding. But, I promise, it’s there.

I’m so happy you stopped by today. I hope to see you again! Please don’t hesitate to shoot me a comment here or an email at heythere@livingagoodelife.org. I’d love to hear about your journey.

Much love,

Erica Goode