The Job I Took Back

On the day I fired the help and hired myself.

Field Note No. 5

We were paying someone $2,500 a month to be with our daughter, and I didn’t have a job anymore. One evening I finally told my wife it should be me.

She agreed.

Our nanny was still with us three months into my early retirement. She was lovely. Reliable, warm, good at most of it. But somewhere in that conversation we said the thing that ended her employment, and it had nothing to do with money. She is never going to care about our kid more than we do.

So why wouldn’t I take over?

The money was the reason I led with. It was true, and it was the easier one to say. The other reason was already sitting there, quieter, and I knew exactly what it was.

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Up until then, freedom had been something I accumulated. Build the company, sell the company, buy cash flowing real estate, hit the number, protect the number. Even after I walked away at 36, the instinct kept running. Keep the options open, keep the calendar clear, keep the freedom intact.

Letting the nanny go was the first time I spent any of it. And the receipt was not what I expected.

I inherited the diapers. The parks. The meals. The naps that would not happen. (Turns out running a company does not prepare you for a toddler who has opinions about socks.)

And I was lonely.

That surprised me most. Not tired, though I was that too. Lonely. My days had gone from fifteen people and a hundred decisions to one toddler who couldn’t talk yet. I missed being someone in a room.

I had spent my twenties and thirties buying my time back, and the first thing I did with it was give it away.

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Then came the barstool.

I looked away for a second. That’s all it was, a second. When I turned back, my 17 month old was climbing it, and then she wasn’t climbing it anymore. She came down, the stool came down after her, and I watched the blunt metal smash into her wrist.

There was a two second delay before the crying started. Those two seconds lasted a year.

She wasn’t verbal yet, so I couldn’t ask her where it hurt. I just knew it wasn’t stopping. Three x-rays and a few hours of urgent care later, a doctor told me it was a minor contusion. We drove home with a tiny sling and a lot of relief.

I knew it was an accident. Kids climb, stools fall.

It still made me question the whole decision. A professional had been doing this job, and I had replaced her with a guy who looked away.

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The answer didn’t come as an argument. It came as a Tuesday.

Dog Beach in Ocean Beach, over and over. She’d run in the sand, pet every friendly dog that came near, and hunt for shells like they were treasure, which to her they were. She’d be asleep before we hit the freeway.

I still have those afternoons. Not photos of them. Them. Sand, wet dog, a kid asleep in the back seat.

Nobody was going to hand me those. There was no version where I bought them later, once things settled down.

And that’s the reason I didn’t lead with that evening.

I lost my mom to lung cancer in 2004. Grief rearranges what you thought was important, and it does it fast. The time you get with the people you love is the only thing that isn’t replaceable, and nobody tells you how much of it is left.

So when the question came up, part of me had answered it long before I opened my mouth.

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Freedom you keep is just optionality. It feels great, it costs nothing, and it does nothing.

Freedom you spend costs you something real. Your quiet, your identity, your Tuesday afternoons. That’s what makes it worth anything.

I didn’t get an easier life out of that decision. I got a fuller one. Those are not the same, and the FIRE brochures rarely mention it.

Best deal I ever made.

So here’s my question for you. What’s one thing you’re keeping your freedom for, that you could spend it on this week instead?

Hit reply or leave a comment. I read every one.

Now go build a life that earns those two words.

Well played, Michael

P.S. Freedom isn’t the finish line. It’s how you play the game.