The End of an Era

I gave my letter of resignation yesterday and the great thing is I'm not looking back. I think this is finally the right time to quit my job for good. It was a great job in terms of pay, benefits, and flexibility. However, it was a dead end for me in terms of being able to be promoted since I was working remotely and it wasn't what I really wanted to be doing anymore now that we have moved and my life is filled with two littles.

I started applying for jobs in the fall of 2006 as I was wrapping up my final semester of graduate school. I had tons and tons of interviews. Most of them were Kansas City firms since that's where Brett was but I also interviewed for a couple of other places just in case I wasn't marketable in KC. I didn't know if I wanted to do tax or audit, I just knew I wanted to be in public accounting so that I wasn't doing the same thing day after day. I received quite a few offers and had it narrowed down to a couple. GT paid slightly more so I decided to go that route. And I am so glad I did.

The offer from GT was with their tax department. I started January 2007. The first few busy seasons (and many times even not during busy season) were crazy. Lots of hours, challenging work, and learning to work with all different kinds of people. Brett and I got married in May 2008 and I was promoted to senior associate August 2008. The long hours continued but Brett's job was equally busy so we worked hard and played hard. 

In April 2009 I started seeing a fertility doctor so that we could start a family. Unbelievably, my insurance through GT covered infertility which has saved us a lot of money over the years and without it who knows if we would have ever had children. I think God was definitely at work putting everything together just right for our family. In May 2010 Kyler was born. I was pretty undecided about whether I should go back to work or stay home with him. There weren't many flexible work arrangement success stories in my office at that time so I didn't think part-time was a real option. I decided to go in and give my two weeks notice. My boss at that time convinced me to stay on and try working a reduced schedule. I decided to try working three days per week.

Our goal after having Kyler was to move back to Seneca before he started school. Since we both grew up in small towns and in small schools, we thought it just felt right. Since this was the goal, we decided to go back to the fertility doctor in October 2010, just five months after Kyler was born. Our first treatment cycle was in February 2011. Brett was actively searching for jobs in the Seneca area and we decided to go ahead and put our house on the market in case it took a while to sell. It didn't. Our house sold in May 2011, I got pregnant and miscarried that summer while we were living in an apartment, and Brett accepted a position in Sabetha in September 2011. 

So off I went again to give my two weeks notice. This time I thought we were at the end of the road since I would be two hours away from the nearest GT office. I was wrong. My boss offered up the suggestion of working remotely from Seneca so I decided to give it a try. We lived with my parents for a few months until we purchased a small house in October 2011, fixed it up, and moved in around the holidays that year. From September 2011 to March 2012, I traveled to Kansas City several times each month (many months I would have to make three trips in a week) to continue fertility treatment. It was a trying time and I really thought hard about giving up but Brett convinced me to keep at it. Finally, we got pregnant again in March and this time it looked like a viable pregnancy.

We purchased a bigger and much more permanent home in June 2012 and moved in August. We plan to stay in this house until our kids are out of high school, maybe even longer. We found some great renters for our smaller house and are updating our current house little by little. In December 2012, we welcomed Myelle into the world. My current boss has offered to keep me on at GT many times but during my maternity leave I have not missed my job at all. Plus, there are some pretty big changes going on (like using a shared services center in India to prepare the returns) that I'm not entirely sure I'm up to. I sent in my letter of resignation yesterday and am completely at peace with my decision.

So this is goodbye to fertility/OB appointments in Kansas City as well as my job at GT. I have been long awaiting this new lifestyle and can't wait to see what the future holds!