Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

Since we adopted L and the shock of baby jail passed, life has been good.  We have a lovely white pickett fence life.  We live in the suburbs.  We have pretty much every thing we want or need.  We live near our extended families, who happen to love our girls and give us time off when we need it.  We have a nice circle of friend whose families have a lot in common with ours.  We love the little community where we live and the bigger city offers pretty much every thing our hearts desire (especially now that we have a good Banh Mi restaurant).

So here we are, living the American Dream.  

Despite our overwelming contentment, in the past year, both Mr. A and I have spent a lot of time looking around and saying “Is this it?  Is this interesting enough?  Will we be living this same thing every day for the rest of our lives?”

It isn’t that it is a BAD life.  Really, it is a charmed life.  But when we look into our future, another 35 years* of living the same thing day in and day out frightens both of us. 

Despite the general contentment, something has still been missing.   I have made no secret about my need for something interesting to look forward too.  I had a some potentially exciting prospects:  Earlier in the year, there was a teeny, tiny chance that we could get sent to China for Mr. A’s job which led to a flurry of hoping and research.  Then, when that fell through, Mr. A and I decided that we wanted to go take a year off and live in China anyway** which led to a lot of excitement  and planning.  At best these plans were an attempt to distract us from our fears and to buy us some space to figure out what we really want to do.

Despite my excitement about China, it is starting to look like we need to figure out things here first. 

I started to see the real problem when we went to Mr. A’s work Christmas party this year.  It is a long story (and not at all interesting) but when we walked out of there, I was convinced he is going to change jobs sooner than our trip to China.  Some other things happened recently, which have made me even more convinced that Mr. A is a bad fit for his current job. 

It isn’t that he works at a bad company, or that Mr. A isn’t great at what he does (really, he is.).   It is just becoming increasingly apparent that Mr. A is never going to achieve his full work-potential at his current job because of the bad fit.  A huge part of Mr. A’s self-satisfaction comes from being a impressive achiever, so we see that this is going to be a bit of a problem.

So after a lot of discussion, Mr. A and I have decided to put a variety of options on the table, most of which could change Mr. A’s entire career trajectory.***  The most surprising option I have agreed to is the possibility of moving to another city**** for a period of time, fully acknowledging that we can’t know how long it would be or if we would ever come back.  There are other options closer to home, too. 

I know this probably makes for some pretty boring reading, but it is a big shake-up around here.  When we moved home, we planned on moving for good or at the very least while our kids are young.  We are standing at a big fork in the road and I have no idea which way we will turn. 

In a way, I am scared of both options.  I am scared that we will be trapped living the same life forever.  On the other hand, I am afraid that if things change, we will be leaving behind the best life we have ever had. 

There are no easy answers, we just have to figure it out and hope for the best.

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*35 years is how long Mr. A expects to work before he has accumulated what he deems an adequate amount of retirements savings.  He revises that to maybe 32.5 years if I work full-time at my maximum earning capacity every year between now and then.  heh. 

**That was the Next Big Thing, which a number of you guessed anyway.  We were planning to go in Fall of 2009 and Mr. A was going to ask for a leave of absence from work and return to the same company when we got back. 

***The China trip is now on the back burner. Part of my need to go for such a long period of time and so quickly was the looming possiblity that Mr. A could be trapped at his current job where he can not get more than 2 weeks off at a stretch at any point in the next 35 years.  Travel is a huge priority of mine, so I found that possibilty to seriously restrictive.  If Mr. A is going on a different career path, we will have the option of scheduling extended trips before he starts a new position at a new company every few years.  Despite my previous excitement, I am not at all upset about tabling that trip for now.

****I have full veto power on the locations and the only contenders at the moment are Chicago, Washington D.C. and the Bay Area.  San Francisco has been on and off my list about 5 times in the past 24 hours because it is so far away from our family.  DC is my lowest preference of the three.  I guess that leaves Chicago at the top, but getting lost a thousand times certainly didn’t lead me to feelings of love for the windy city.  Also, Chicago is kind of an ugly city: dirty and industrial.