A few years ago I lost my job (and me with a pregnant wife and two kids to support!
). This was right after 9-11, the tech boom was dying, and the only jobs available were in the defense industry. I struggled between going with my intuition -- which said, against all logic, to go for building a start-up with a friend of mine -- and my logical mind -- which said, against all intuition, to look for a job in defense.
I tried to do both: I looked for a job while trying to build software with my friend on the side. But without funding, our software project was going nowhere fast. And both of us were too scared to go look for funding. :-)
After five months of essentially nothing, I suddenly had three offers in the defense industry simultaneously. One was in the Washington, DC, area, where I was already living; but I rejected that because both logic and intuition said we needed to move away from there. One was in Florida, and the third was in Buffalo, NY. The Florida position was one where I would get a lot of say in the projects I worked on, and more money than the Buffalo position as well; plus, it was, you know,
in Florida. But my gut said Buffalo. This time I followed my gut...
* A year later, the area of Florida where I would have been working was struck by a hurricane.
* In Florida, we would have been home-schooling, because the public schools were terrible and private schools hard to find. In Buffalo, we found a Waldorf school, which was perfect for us. Waldorf has affected our lives in many wonderful ways.
* In Buffalo, I wasn't in charge -- but that was good, because I wasn't ready to be. I learned a tremendous amount from the people there.
* Shortly before I left Buffalo, I found that the Buffalo company was competing for a contract against the Florida company. The Buffalo company won.
When I first moved to Buffalo, things were difficult, and I wondered if following my gut had been such a good idea. But it turned out my intuition was right.
Since then, I've done a better job of following my intution. A year and a half ago, against all logic, I left my job in Buffalo and headed with my family (now grown to four children) to unemployment in Massachusetts. I found a new job in four months -- one I'm very happy with, for more money, that allows me to work from home three days a week, and a lot of flexibility. We're not all the way to Nirvana yet -- we're still in a small apartment, for example, instead of the relatively expansive home in the suburbs of Buffalo -- but we'll get there. I know it!