A few years ago, I landed my dream job. I was asked to lead the content team for an amazing brand and reinvent its look and feel, all while working with a ton of inspiring, creative people.
It was the kind of job I told people about, and their jaws dropped. “Oh my God, this is so perfect for you!” they would gush.
It really was. However, there was one pretty enormous catch: the commute. The job was based fully across the country from me, in Denver.
And the deal was that I had to be in the office for one week every third week, no exceptions.
Juggling my job and my kids was already a challenge
Liz Zack
Living in the New Jersey suburbs and working in New York City my entire career, I was used to heartbreaking, no-win work/parenting moments.
Many days, my commute to work would top 90 minutes each way. Many nights, sitting at a standstill in a train somewhere between the city and my town on infuriatingly unreliable NJ Transit, I would watch the minutes tick away, knowing I wouldn’t make it home by my young kids’ bedtime.
Especially in those early years, it was a work/life tradeoff we lost as often as we won. My husband and I got to have alpha jobs we loved, and my kids got to play in grassy suburban backyards, but the ratios would constantly be out of whack.
I have a super ambitious CEO friend who used to tell me that “balance” was best evaluated longitudinally. Month-to-month, not day-to-day. It was crushing to think too much about the midday kids’ Halloween parade you were missing for the twice-rescheduled client kick-off.
After taking the role, I tried to adjust to our new normal
Liz Zack
So in some ways, my new role — one week working in Denver, then two weeks at home — felt like a massive upgrade.
For the first time in my life, I was completely around when my kids got home from school. But I would still run the calculations endlessly in my head.
What was better for them — me being somewhat absent during the week, every week? Or me being completely gone every third week, but around the other two? There was literally no way to know.
We created new rituals for the week I was away — my youngest would request tours of the bathroom in every fancy hotel room, giggling over FaceTime when I showed him the potty and the extra toilet paper neatly stacked alongside. “They must have been planning for you to stay here!” I would joke.
I was completely split in two during that time. I actually loved my days out West: Fancy hotels, grown-up dinners, beautiful weather, exciting, important work with inspiring people.
However, I also began to dread that Sunday flight earlier and earlier on in my at-home weeks — always cutting into that last weekend night with an almost certainly turbulent descent into the Denver airport.
Years later, my now-teens made me realize I shouldn’t have been so hard on myself
Liz Zack
Many years after I left that role — and the pandemic had made working from home much more common — I brought up the job with my kids. “Remember when Mom used to travel every three weeks? I know that was a hard time.”
Reader, they literally did not remember it.
Not like it was no big deal, but like they literally did not remember the years I spent commuting over the Rocky Mountains.
Of course, this is a lesson to all working parents to be less hard on themselves. A modicum of “all the ways you think you’re screwing up your kids, you’re actually not.”
But it’s impossible to realize when it’s happening, and honestly, looking back with almost-independent teens now, I don’t regret a moment of it.
