The email that shook the world (possibly a slight exaggeration)

Between my last post and this one, I am evidently in a calendar-watching type of mood right now.  But one year ago yesterday, I would have never guessed that our family would be living in Sweden right now.  We were way too busy trying to get Calvin to sleep through the night to plan out a move across the pond.

Then in a very brief window of downtime at work, this email came though: 

From: Crick, Todd
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2011 9:41 AM
To: Ericsson
Subject: Global Positions
All,
I've recently been informed about some positions with the BUGS strategy group and the head of that group has reached out to me and suggested that inCode consultants might be great for the roles.
Note that these are permanent relo positions in Stockholm in the BUGS strategy group - internal strategy.
If any of you have potential interest, let me know and I'll make a connection.
Todd

Lisa and I had tried to move internationally since grad school, but it had never actually worked out for us.  I forwarded it to her on a whim before quickly getting back to the project I was working on.

Somewhat, but not really, to my surprise, she was all for the idea.  We talked quickly over gchat and I sent a note to my boss asking for a few more details. 

The next day we were walking around a food festival in midtown Atlanta when we got an email back that really ramped everything up for us.  Todd explained that while it was not a “shoe-in”, the opportunity was basically mine to lose if we really wanted it (looking back on the number of interview hoops I needed to go through, I think that was more than a slight exaggeration).

Sitting down at the Taste of Atlanta...contemplating the future

This floored Lisa and I and we had to sit down and just stare blankly at the festival that was going on around us.  Here was an opportunity that we had been chasing for literally years, and now it was actually a realistic possibility.  We kind of felt like proverbial dog that catches the car. 

What do we do if this actually happens??  We have an infant.  We have a house.  We have great friends that we love spending time with.  Southwest was going to make it a lot easier to go back and forth to the A for our folks.  Lisa had a great work situation.  We loved our lives in Atlanta. 

SO many reasons not to go forward with this…

But I’m glad we did.

And to think that everything has happened since is because I didn't just skim over a piece of “junk mail” that showed up on my phone one day….