For most of the last five years, whenever a friend asked me how things were going, I hesitated to answer. Because, invariably, it was going to be a negative answer, often revolving around the stresses and toll of caregiving for my dad; or if it wasn’t that, it was trying to get ahead of similar issues with my mom, or not being able to enjoy the travel schedule we previously had, or worrying about how we’d really make all the money stuff work. There just weren’t a ton of positives to gush about. We were even too stressed out to enjoy most of the trips we did somehow manage to squeeze in.
I hated that my answer to that question harkened back to the same ongoing issues, time after time. They had all heard about it enough, I told myself, and I’m sure they didn’t want to hear about it yet again. The problem was, it was the major news since we had gotten together last. Like a new parent can’t not update you on their baby—since that’s now a primary focus of their life—I was stuck giving updates on caregiving and the latest health crisis. That’s what so much of my life revolved around. It was, simply, a difficult time for us. And it felt like a struggle to talk about it.
Fast forward to today, and things have changed.
We’re still tired and stressed out, but that should correct itself this year, as we recover from it all. Our big (somewhat audacious) bets and the hard work we did to enact them have paid off. We’re now in the best financial position we’ve ever been in—by a wide margin. Our financial future looks very bright. While I’m still dealing with the loss of my dad, it’s also a big stressor that’s been removed from our lives. We have radically improved nearly every facet of my mom’s life, and set her up to live independently for (hopefully) quite some time. Our time freedom is about to grow substantially, as will our travel. And, somehow, we’re embarking on a 100-day overseas vacation in two months, and we already have all the vacation time and money to pay for it.
Things are, somewhat suddenly, really, really good for us.
And now we face the exact opposite problem. It’s again hard to talk about what’s new and noteworthy with friends—not because it’s the same old story, but because it’s suddenly too good of a story.
It’s hard to talk about paying off our mortgage with the friend who is months behind on their own because they were jobless for a year. Or the friends who ended up getting shut out of the housing market, just as they put down their first house offer. Or to talk about our newfound freedom with the new parents whose schedule is now severely limited by their newborn. Or even just the friends who, for whatever reason, don’t seem to have any fun or exciting things going on.
I’m really excited about where we are at, and really proud about how we got here. And I desperately want to tell, I dunno, pretty much everyone about it.
But, alas, sometimes that’s hard to do.