I Actually Moved to the Beach. Turns Out, That Wasn't the Answer.

You know that thing people say when they're completely fed up with work?

I just want to quit, move to the beach and live a simple life.

I did that.

I left the corporate world, moved to Nicaragua and lived by the beach for almost five years.

And it was wonderful.

I met incredible people. I experienced an entire family of 6 on a single motorcycle, earthquakes that shoved me off the couch, and tropical storms that left thousands of people homeless and one of the strongest communities to show up in support of them. I volunteered at a local animal shelter and felt heartbreak and unfairness like I’ve never before seen. 

But I also learned to slow down. To shop at the butcher, then walk over to the lovely ladies selling the locally grown fruits and vegetables. I learned where the coldest beer was served and where karaoke happened Friday nights.

I stepped outside the life I'd been living for a very long time.

But here's the funny thing.

Eventually I discovered that I didn't actually want to stop working.

I wanted to stop working like that.

For years, I'd worked in large corporate IT and cybersecurity environments. And despite all the talk about “work-life balance,” there were times when the way we worked seemed almost deliberately designed to make relatively straightforward things exhausting.

As a problem-solver at heart, this situation was infuriating:

Something would go wrong and instead of Okay. What happened? How do we fix it?

We'd spend an hour discussing whose fault it was.

Meetings about meetings. Politics. Finger pointing. Protecting departments. Explaining why something belonged to somebody else's team.

Meanwhile, the actual problem was still sitting there waiting for someone to solve it.

I don't think this is unique to IT, and certainly not every organization or manager operates this way. I've worked with some excellent people throughout my career.

But I saw enough of it to know that I didn't want to spend the rest of mine doing that.

At the time, I think I interpreted that feeling as wanting out.

Out of corporate. Out of the pressure. Out of the whole thing.

Hence, Nicaragua. (well, and a couple of other reasons…it was 2021 after all)

What I've realized since coming back to Canada in May is that I never really wanted out of the work.

I love the work. I am actively looking to shift back into cybersecurity consulting (if anyone is interested, reach out). 

I love technology.

I love figuring out why something isn't working.

I love looking at five different systems and figuring out how they should talk to each other. Or how to keep the data safe. 

I love understanding what a business is trying to accomplish and finding a smarter, more scalable, more secure or more financially sensible way to use technology to get there.

I love the moment when someone says, “Here's what we're trying to do, but we can't figure out how,” and I get to start pulling the pieces apart.

Apparently my version of a simple life still involves complicated technology.

What changed is the environment I want to do it in.

Today, I work with organizations and business owners in a much more strategic consulting capacity. The technology changes. Sometimes it's cybersecurity. Sometimes it's systems, integrations, automation, websites, email platforms or figuring out why some ridiculous piece of software refuses to do the perfectly reasonable thing we would like it to do.

But the philosophy is remarkably consistent:

Solve the problem.

Something went wrong?

Okay. What do we do next?

The wrong email went to the wrong people?

Crap. Figure out what happened, send the correction or apology, fix whatever caused it and keep moving.

The technology failed during an important launch?

Nobody needs a 45-minute investigation into whose fault it was while the launch is still happening. We need Plan B. Now.

There will be time afterward to figure out what failed and make sure it doesn't happen again.

That's very different from blame.

And maybe that's the part of “work-life balance” I've become most skeptical about.

We tend to talk about balance as though the solution to miserable work is making sure you escape from it for enough hours every evening.

Close the laptop at five.

Take your vacation.

Protect your weekends.

All good things.

But if your working hours are spent navigating unnecessary politics, defensiveness, blame and dysfunction, I'm not convinced a yoga class at 6:00 fixes the underlying problem. (My other business/passion is holistic nutrition…one thing I’ve learned is “time off” or “stress management” alone isn’t enough to combat the chaos of our lives - if you want to learn more about how to truly embody safety while working a high-paced, demanding job, I’ve got so many effective strategies!)

Because perhaps the better question isn't always:

How do I get more life away from my work?

Perhaps sometimes it's:

How do I build a working life I don't constantly need to escape from?

It took me literally moving to a beach to figure that out.

I don't regret it for a second.

In fact, I think walking away gave me enough distance to understand what I actually wanted to come back to.

And surprisingly, it wasn't a simpler life.

It was interesting work.

Complex problems.

Good people.

Clients who want someone to tell them when something doesn't make sense, help them figure out what does, and then get on with it.

I don't need every day to go perfectly. Technology has already made it abundantly clear that it has no intention of granting me that wish.

I just want to work with people whose response when something goes wrong is:

“Okay. How do we fix it?”

Not:

“Okay. Whose fault is it?”

Turns out I didn't need to escape work.

I needed to find my way of doing it.

The beach was lovely, though. Highly recommend Nicaragua if you haven’t been!