Developing my Priorities

I have been reading a lot of a new blog I started following, Marriage Confessions. It is fantastic and has gotten me really excited about growing up and being an adult. General synopsis is a couple that got married when they turned 21 and are just about to have their second child.

So most of you know that I have always been especially eager to grow up and for the next steps in life. My plan was always to get married at 24 and have kids at 25/26 and 28/29. I always wanted a very involved career too. Starting around 7th grade, I realized my original dream job of a marine biologist would not be very lucrative, so I figured it made more sense to go into business. It didn't take long to get my dreams up to wanting to be a CEO/CFO or other executive position. Everything was going according to plan, I did FBLA and DECA in high school, got good grades and got into a great business school. In my freshman year of college I was initially a marketing major, when I realized I was a much better fit for accounting (and I would have a better chance of getting a job). When thoughts of the future came to mind, I assumed I would figure out how to balance an intense career and a family when it came to that.

Then I met Dylan. And everything changed.  I only recently understood that my priorities started changing even back then. I realize that when I met Dylan I began to really want to make him and our family-to-be my biggest priority.

One of the times I realized I really was changing my priorities was actually during recruitment for the public accounting firms. Not really the most ideal time to realize you plan to make your career your secondary priority. Not that I let them know that ;) As I was thinking through responses to practice questions, I came to understand that I am motivated by my family. All of my family. In career terms, I need a job in order to support my family.  I have always had the drive to succeed, and a lot of this drive comes from wanting to make my family proud, namely my parents.

I was involved in a Leadership Challenges class in college and one of the executives was a female CEO of a pretty big company. She was really cool and managed to make a family and a career work. Her husband actually ended up being a stay at home dad for their two kids. She said one of the hardest parts of being a parent was trying to balance work and family. Dylan and I have discussed having a stay at home parent if it made financial sense to do so. We pretty much decided it would be Dylan, since as of right now I have more breadwinning potential. I also don't think I am stay at home mom material, but that's a discussion for another time.

Then recently, I have not been able to spend enough time with my family, both Dylan and my parents and extended family. I do not want this to be the case. I want to be able to prioritize my family, but still be able to have a job I find fulfilling.

This is a definite work in progress. I just hope that Dylan and I are able to manage having jobs we love and have enough time to spend with our kids and each other in the years to come.

I feel like my parents did a great job of this. My dad went into work early so he could pick us up from daycare/school, and my mom went into work later so she could drop us off. Then my mom went back to school when I was in third grade. This worked out great because then my mom was always home when we got home and during the summers we got to spend time at home or out and about at the zoo, butterfly pavilion, park, etc.

So maybe I'll end up going back to school once our kids all reach elementary school. All I know is that I will work to make Dylan a priority and then I won't have much of a choice once the kids start showing up!