welp. how much time do you have....?
i haven't even updated since we moved to north carolina!
after a year of working on fornite for epic in utah, bradley was reassigned to a different epic project which required him to relocate to HQ in raleigh. so we packed up and shipped out to north carolina in june. even though there were whisperings of other opportunities out west coming into the works soon, we felt strongly that raleigh was the right destination for us.
we had a fun road trip down, followed by a whirlwind week of unpacking, followed by the best family reunion EVER with my family in charleston, followed by starting up school immediately, due to year round school! bea has the best first grade teacher in the history of the universe and we love her school. leaving miss jen behind for oliver was one of the saddest farewells from utah we had, but we found a great preschool for him as well. it's not miss jen, but it's a close second.
i love it here. i have everything i could ever want. we ended up snagging our dreamy little house. i live among tall, beautiful, thick, deciduous trees, we are in a supportive ward with fast friends, bea has a perfect school, ollie loves his preschool, bea is in a great dance program, our neighborhood is an amazing community (with a great pool ;) ), it seems like every day there is a new lake to go hiking by, the weather is amazing and it doesn't get too cold, but we have enough chill to change the leaves, everything here is affordable, we're close to the beach. and to top it all off, within a month of moving here, brad got an ENORMOUS raise. i have it all.
except one thing.
a happy husband.
it's no secret that epic had become more and more dysfunctional the more popular their games became, and it reflected in the workload and harmful work culture. they began to develop a terrible reputation, and with good reason. soon, crunch went from once a month to every single day. hours were extended to late hours of the night. more work was being demanded with no new man-power to back it up. everyone was (and still is) exhausted, cranky, and overwhelmed.
what we thought would be a good change with getting closer to HQ ended up being a disaster. brad was more unhappy than he's ever been at any workplace before. he came home wanting to quit every. single. day.
meanwhile, 2 companies (one in the bay area, one in seattle) had been asking him to come work for them.
it infuriated me. at first i wouldn't even entertain the idea.
we JUST got here! i had everything i wanted! we just got a huge raise! isn't that enough to keep us happy?! surely he could hold out a LITTLE longer to see if it gets better?
he did, and it didn't. it got worse and worse every day. the little time brad did get with me and the kids after his late hours he spent exhausted and irritable. he worked all weekend long. he woke up at 6 am to manage things at work and was at work until late into the night. he would come home and then work at home. and with no reward. no positivity at the office, low morale no matter how much was getting done, all while feeling like nothing was getting done at all.
i finally started warming up to other ideas and entertaining offers elsewhere. i couldn't live like this anymore. even though we had everything we thought we wanted, no one was happy.
i was so frustrated and wondered if this whole thing had been one big stupid mistake. i felt foolish. i couldn't figure out what i was doing here. i felt so so so strongly that we should come here, but now it looked like there was no way we could stay and keep our family functional. i thought to myself "why in the world would god give me this amazing setup and then almost instantly snatch it away???" it felt cruel. i felt stuck. but then i had an epiphany one day, and it changed everything. i felt stupid for not realizing it earlier.
you can have a perfect life on paper, but if your family members are miserable, everything is miserable, no matter how perfect your life may seem. but i still wondered, why did i get such a strong prompting to come here? how could that possibly have been right?
i shared my struggles with my sisters and shannon sent me a story from the new era magazine (linked here). it is basically a story about a father and a son who are heading home from a fishing trip at dusk. they come to a fork in the road they didn't remember, even thought they thought they knew the way home. they said a prayer really quick to find out which way to go. they both felt a strong prompting: "go to the left". so they went to the left. it was a dead end. they turned around and took the other path, leading them back to the familiar road home.
they asked each other, "why were we both prompted to go to the left, even though it was the wrong way?"
the answer became clear. they had to be absolutely sure that they were going the right way, before it got too dark, and they got lost completely. it took finding the dead end path first to be certain the other way was the right way.
what a perfect lesson! it illustrated EXACTLY how i was feeling!
brad and i both agreed, had we entertained the other opportunities first instead of giving epic HQ a fair shake, we would always have wondered if we should have just stayed with epic. we would get to the expensive west coast wondering if we would have just been happier back in the easy, affordable south.
spoiler alert: we aren't.
SO. it is without further ado that i announce our next and imminent move to seattle, WA!!!!!!!!!!!!! ahhhhh what even is this life?! brad got a very attractive and enthusiastic offer to work at wizards of the coast in seattle this week and put in his notice at epic on tuesday. if you are unfamiliar with that company, buckle up for the nerdiness because they are the fellas that brought you Magic cards annnnnnd dungeons and dragons! (among other things lol). it's not fortnite but for that we are eternally grateful. we have learned that fortnite is not a nice place to be. (for more info on that i highly recommend checking out Hasan Minaj's netflix patriot act episode about the video game industry. it is insanely accurate and eye opening).
is it going to be hard to leave this all behind? absolutely. am i worried about moving our family and disrupting the kids? obviously of course. but honestly, as brad's interview process moved further and further and epic for him got worse and worse, the idea of leaving got more and more bearable each day. at this point i can honestly say i am excited to start over somewhere new and get bradley back to good health. he has been put through the wringer. we have been pumping positivity about this situation to the kids for a month now and i think even they are getting amped for it.
we're adding another state to our list, and i can't lie, i am EXCITED.
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