Part 2 of Where I've been since 2013
Continued on from And she's back!
Getting that job at Lush was exciting but problematic because you see, my fiancé and I had just bought a house that year, which we loved dearly, and his job was firmly Brisbane based. So, the plan was, I’d move down there, find somewhere super cheap (haha, it was Sydney, as if that was ever going to happen) give it six months and if I wasn’t into it, I’d quit and come back.
Unsurprisingly, considering my career path so far, I actually enjoyed it for the most part (although it was stressful in a way that I hadn’t predicted) and when that six-month mark came around, another promotion had come up and I began to co-manage the entire Brand Communication team. I was so fortunate that my partner in crime turned out to be one of the best people on the planet, so I was loath to leave because even when the work wasn’t fun at least I got to work with a dear friend. And plus, it was really exciting work at the time. Building it from the ground up, expanding, evolving. I did learn a lot from those experiences.
Eventually, Brad made the difficult decision to quit his job (which he loved, so that was tough) and move down to Sydney with me. At this point, we’d been doing the long distance thing for about 18 months and it was wearing thin. I’d always have to fly up and visit (although it was hard to do that more than once a month because, airtravel ain’t cheap) because we had two dogs and a bird with him so it wasn’t really feasible for him to come down because someone had to care for them. In that 18 months, we managed one visit of him to Sydney and that was only because my parents volunteered to housesit.
The poor guy had to pack up most of the house on his own, including my soap room, which was no mean feat because I had close to 150 molds and a tonne of materials until I had annual leave and could fly up to help. I’d found us somewhere else to live that would allow pets (usually impossible in Sydney) and with the interstate movers ready to go, it was just a matter of us getting all of the pets into the car and starting that 12 hour drive.
Sadly, Brad really didn’t like his new job and mine had morphed into something I didn’t recognise. Both of us were unhappy, stressed and felt trapped. Then, I fell pregnant. It was a surreal time for us because honestly, for many years, we were intentionally child-free, so it was an incredible shock to our family and friends when we announced I was pregnant.
For the most part, it was a hassle free pregnancy but I was extremely tired and had PGP that was made worse by my existing scoliosis. Work was constantly stressful and I found myself angry all of the time. When pregnancy forced me to mostly stick to 9-5 hours and take a lunch break, I realised how insanely overworked I had been. What I used to achieve, there was no way I could pump out that level of work anymore. Pregnancy highlighted that I had been heading towards burnout for a long time.
I had the baby in Sydney (which was a drama, but again, this isn’t the place for it) and Brad was lucky enough to be offered a job with his old work in Brisbane. It also coincided with the lease being up for the tenants renting our house in Brisbane, so everything feel into place once again and the yellow brick road led us back to Brisbane. This time, with a 5 week old baby and a very sore, unable to legally drive yet, mumma bear.
I still had close to 10 months on my maternity leave, wasn't in a rush to make any big decisions so we just enjoyed life, in our old house and had enough family nearby that looking after a newborn wasn’t quite as overwhelming as it might be been in Sydney. It was also was more affordable to be back in Brisbane because Lush don't offer paid maternity leave and Sydney rent is crippling. We couldn't have afforded to stay anyway.
