Life Rhymes

Back when I quit my dream job at the end of 2016, having that particular job didn’t fit with our life goals. We were about to have Baby Emerson and wanted to have an RV adventure. Karissa’s teaching contract allowed her to take basically 18 months off (without pay) so it was a great setup for our RV adventure – with a safety valve of returning to her job at the end of the adventure.

We had Baby Emerson and embarked on our wonderful RV adventure. Karissa returned to to work to be “Mommy the Provider“. I stayed home with the kids. It seemed like the best setup for us – with summers off and a parent at home with our kids. And it was the right choice at the time.

But about halfway through the second school year as a stay-at-home parent, I was ready to do something else. Staying home with young kids is hard work! I explored an opportunity in Europe that didn’t work out. I began to reconnect with select contacts and looking through job postings.

Covid hitting and sending Karissa home was amazing – even though she had to work through the end of the school year. Karissa and I make a pretty good parenting team and genuinely work better together. She took another leave for this current school year to assist the kids with e-learning and facilitate their education.

Selling our house and deciding to seek warm weather meant that Karissa couldn’t return to her teaching job. Behind the scenes, I’ve been interviewing for a host of jobs since the fall. I’ve talked to (and interviewed with) investment managers, financial advisors, big companies, FinTech startups, and non-profits. It’s been fun to learn about various roles and daunting to figure out one that fits our location and lifestyle goals. But it seems we’ve found the perfect fit.

We’ve shared it a few times, but we quit eating animal products in 2020. The driving force behind that change was better health. But when you learn about animal agriculture and the toll it puts on the environment, such a simple change as eating only plants becomes reinforced.

In my prior role, I helped pick stocks for a mutual fund. I specialized in utility companies. Many of them owned or facilitated renewable power like solar and wind farms. I remember eating dinner with the CEO of Edison International, Ted Craver, and talking to him about the environment and the future of utilities.

He was vegan, which I thought was unbelievable. We talked about why an electric-only future was needed, why it made sense economically, and what some of the shortcomings were from a practical standpoint. Looking back, that dinner shaped a lot of my thinking about the role of utilities in the green future.

Parallel to that, the rise of a type of company called a “YieldCo” was happening. These companies owned renewable power assets with long-term, fixed-price contracts.

These assets provide power at reasonable rates with no commodity price risk. So if oil is $200/barrel or natural gas goes to $10, the power price needed to break even doesn’t change! What a great concept! Not to mention that renewable power is clean and not harmful to the environment!

We’re currently a full-time RV family – but are building a house in Babcock Ranch, America’s first 100% solar-powered town. The town focuses on sustainability in everything. The greenery is native, not necessarily “pretty” as the main reason to choose it. There is a solar field that provides enough power for the town. There are solar “trees” in the town square. It’s a cool place! Solar-powered and sustainable fits our lifestyle!

This is all a long-winded way of saying that I’ve found a job that rhymes with all of this. A job that focuses on sustainability, a greener future, and gives us the locational flexibility we crave. I’m starting my new job at a non-profit that works to influence policy and provide data to prove that renewable power is both economical and necessary.

I’ll be a remote-first worker. We can travel home to see my parents and spend extended time at the family lake house. It’s basically the perfect job for our personal situation and vision of a greener future.

It’s a big change for us. But feels like it is the best possible scenario. Life rhymes. And right now everything seems aligned.