A few years ago I got my dream job. I was asked to lead the content team of an incredible brand and reinvent its look, all while working with a ton of creative and inspiring people. It was the kind of job I told people about and their jaws dropped. “OMG, this is so perfect
A few years ago I got my dream job. I was asked to lead the content team of an incredible brand and reinvent its look, all while working with a ton of creative and inspiring people.
It was the kind of job I told people about and their jaws dropped. “OMG, this is so perfect for you!” they would sprout.
It really was. However, there was one pretty big problem: the commute. The work was done across the country, in Denver.
And the deal was that I had to be in the office one week every three weeks, no exceptions.
Juggling between my job and my children was already a challenge
Sometimes my husband was able to attend certain activities and events that I had to miss. Liz Zack
Living in the New Jersey suburbs and working in New York City my entire career, I was accustomed to heartbreaking, dead-end moments in work and parenting.
Many days, my commute to work was over 90 minutes each way. Many nights, sitting stopped on a train somewhere between the city and my town on the infuriatingly unreliable NJ Transit, I watched the minutes tick by, knowing I wouldn’t make it home at my young children’s bedtime.
Especially in those early years, it was a work-life trade-off that we lost as often as we won. My husband and I had alpha jobs that we loved, and my kids played in grassy suburban backyards, but the ratios were constantly out of whack.
I have a very ambitious CEO friend who used to tell me that “balance” was best assessed longitudinally. Month by month, not day by day. It was overwhelming to think too much about the noon Halloween children’s parade you missed for the twice-rescheduled client start.
After taking on the role, I tried to adapt to our new normal.
Being a working parent is hard enough without having to fly across the country every month. Liz Zack
So in some ways, my new role (one week working in Denver and then two weeks at home) felt like a huge improvement.
For the first time in my life, I was fully present when my children came home from school. But I was still doing the math endlessly in my head.
What was better for them: that I was somewhat absent during the week, every week? Or go completely every three weeks, but around the other two? There was literally no way to know.
We created new rituals for the week I was away: My youngest son requested bathroom tours in every fancy hotel room, and laughed over FaceTime when I showed him the potty and extra toilet paper neatly stacked next to it. “They must have been planning for you to stay here!” I would joke.
I was completely torn in two during that time. In fact, I loved my days out West: fancy hotels, grown-up dinners, beautiful weather, exciting and important work with inspiring people.
However, I also began to dread that Sunday flight earlier and earlier during my weeks at home, always punctuating the final weekend night with an almost certainly turbulent descent to the Denver airport.
Years later, my teenage years made me realize that I shouldn’t have been so hard on myself.
Leaving my children devastated me back then, but now they don’t even remember it. Liz Zack
Many years after I left that position (and the pandemic had made working from home much more common), I mentioned the job to my children. “Do you remember when Mom used to travel every three weeks? I know it was a hard time.”
Reader, they literally didn’t remember it.
Not that it wasn’t a big deal, but it literally I didn’t remember the years I spent traveling through the Rocky Mountains.
Of course, this is a lesson for all working parents to be less hard on themselves. A minimum of “all the ways you think you’re ruining your kids, you’re really not.”
But it’s impossible to tell when it’s happening, and honestly, looking back at almost independent teenagers, I don’t regret it for a moment.