I Came Home Different
Three weeks away reminded me that success isn’t just about how much we can fit into our lives, but what we choose to make room for.
I came home from three weeks in Europe tired, overpacked, grateful for my own bed and craving very ordinary things: bottomless coffee, takeout Chinese food, Double Stuf Oreos, and absolutely no need to figure out another train, flight, rental car, or foreign-language road sign.
But I also came home different.
I didn’t realize it immediately. I knew the trip had been meaningful. How could it not be? I spent more than a week traveling through Poland largely on my own. I drove to the villages where my grandparents were born. I stayed with Polish-speaking cousins and relied heavily on Google Translate to help us fill in the gaps. I reunited with our former exchange daughter after more than a decade. I found a grandmother’s birth record our family had been searching for for years. And I returned to places which had shaped me as a child and young adult.
I also spent time with people I had allowed far too much time to pass without seeing.
One night in Kraków, I sat across from an Alliance College friend I had not shared a drink with in 41 years. The ridiculous part is that, for several of those early years, we had lived practically around the corner from one another.
Life got busy, we said. That sentence says an awful lot, doesn’t it?
When we are young, we assume there will always be more time. Another vacation. Another dinner. Another call. Another possibility to reconnect. Then suddenly years, even decades, have passed.
The unexpected death of our mutual friend Dave, late last year, was one reason I finally made this trip. It was a painful reminder that tomorrow really is not promised.
Somewhere along the way, “I’ll do it later” had become far too comfortable a habit.
What I didn’t expect was how much that realization would follow me home, changing not only how I want to spend my time, but how I think about work, leadership, and the future of MARQUEE.
I leave my desk at something resembling a traditional workday hour most nights. I am discovering the strange pleasure of arriving home while the sun is still shining.
I have given notice that I will be stepping down from several board positions. I have turned down committee assignments in organizations I care about and intend to remain involved with. That would have been almost impossible for me a year ago. I have always believed that if something worthwhile needed doing and I could help, I should.
I’m beginning to understand that “could” and “should” are not the same thing.
My favorite change started before I even reached Poland. During a quiet Sunday afternoon in New York, I did something this English Lit major had somehow stopped doing: I opened a book.
I finished it.
Then another.
Between reading and listening, I consumed five books during the trip. Five. I had not finished one in nearly three years.
When I came home, I went to the library and got another. I’m almost finished with that one, too.
Nothing earth-shattering happened. I remembered something I loved and had quietly pushed out of my life because there was always something “more productive” to do.
That insight has made me think differently about my marriage, too. I don’t want my primary time with my husband to be one exhausted hour in front of the television at the end of the night. I don’t want another 17 years to pass before I return to Kraków after promising myself I would go every other year. And I certainly don’t want another 40 years to pass before I sit across a table from someone I love.
It’s Changing How I Lead, Too
The funny thing is, this new perspective has not made me less ambitious about MARQUEE.
Quite the opposite.
It has made me clearer.
We do great work. Really great work. We have built experience, relationships, credentials, and a team that benefits our clients. So why have I sometimes found myself chasing opportunities that clearly aren’t right for us, overexplaining our value, or trying to convince someone to respect the expertise they hired us for?
I don’t want to do that anymore.
We can be flexible without being undervalued. We can act collaboratively without being micromanaged. We can care deeply about a client’s success without accepting every client who comes through the door.
At the same time, I came home ready to push MARQUEE forward. I have signed on new partners who expand our capabilities into marketing areas I have wanted us to offer for years. We are strengthening our digital, web, optimization, and strategy-oriented services to make us a more complete agency.
For a long time, I thought being a good business owner meant being involved in everything.
I’m beginning to understand that becoming a better CEO may require exactly the opposite.
It signifies choosing where I am most valuable – trusting talented people to do what they do best – and protecting the time and brainpower needed to see what comes next – and being willing to say no to work, obligations, and expectations that pull us away from where we are trying to go.
Travel didn’t give me all the answers. It simply gave me enough distance to see some things more clearly.
I’m not becoming less ambitious.