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  HIGH PRAISE FOR FIRST WE QUIT OUR JOBS

  “Wonderfully written, charmingly intimate. The adventures of two escape artists from the big city rat race who set out to explore North America, each other and a life without pressure. A fantasy we all can share.”

  —Nathaniel Branden, Ph.D.,

  psychologist and author of

  The Art of Living Consciously

  “FIRST WE QUIT OUR JOBS makes the fantasy a reality. In an honest, unpretentious style, Marilyn Abraham loosens the knot of corporate competition and meetings of the bored and takes to the road. If you’ve ever thought about discovering freedom, rediscovering loved ones and starting over, begin here.”

  —Warren Farrell, Ph.D., author of

  The Myth of Male Power and

  Why Men Are the Way They Are

  “It starts like a prison-escape movie then turns into a picaresque travelogue and winds up … well, it never really does end, which is the point of the book. Marilyn Abraham’s excellent adventure begins anew on almost every page. What fun she’s had!”

  —Jane and Michael Stern

  “For anyone who’s ever fantasized about chucking it all and hitting the open road in search of America and yourself, this book is a must read. Abraham is a graceful and zesty writer whose experience goes to the heart of the searching baby boomer at midlife.”

  —Wanda Urbanska and Frank Levering,

  authors of Moving to a Small Town

  and Simple Living

  A DELL TRADE PAPERBACK

  Published by

  Dell Publishing

  a division of

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  1540 Broadway

  New York, New York 10036

  Copyright © 1997 by Marilyn J. Abraham

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and

  Trademark Office.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Abraham, Marilyn J.

  First we quit our jobs : how one work-driven couple got on the

  road to a new life / by Marilyn J. Abraham.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-79697-4

  1. United States—Description and travel. 2. Abraham, Marilyn J.—

  Journeys—United States. 3. Career changes—United States.

  I. Title.

  E169.04.A28 1997

  917.304’92—dc20 96-33579

  v3.1

  For Sandy,

  the master of change

  Contents

  Cover

  Map

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1 The End

  2 Making a Life

  3 Motor Home & Garden

  4 Crossing the River

  5 Superior

  6 Roman Holiday

  7 Mile Zero

  8 Sergeant Preston, If You Please

  9 Gold!

  10 Baked Alaska

  11 It’s a Man Thing

  12 Salmon 101

  13 Father’s Days

  14 Personal Effects

  15 Half Full

  16 Greta Garbo in Last Chance Gulch

  17 Company’s Coming

  18 The Fortune Garage

  19 Mazel in Moab

  20 Gathering Marbles

  21 Ruin Junkies

  22 Full Moon over Eldorado

  23 Pandora’s Box

  24 Tony Bennett and Me

  25 The Do/Be Ratio Calculation or Change Is Not a Dirty Word

  26 The Beginning

  The End

  My eyes drifted across my office. Beyond the elegant gray and maroon art deco furniture, bookshelves filled with the national best sellers for which my firm was famous lined the walls.

  Outside were the other immense limestone buildings of Rockefeller Center. Surely this was the most coveted business address in the world. Despite the sixty-plus years since the complex was built, its architecture and decorative art felt fresh and inspiring. It was always exhilarating to walk through the lobby of NBC, with its massive murals.

  As I thought about my surroundings, I felt myself floating out through the window, into the fresh air, observing the scenes I knew were there. A few stragglers still ogled the empty set of the Today show down the block. Around the corner a dozen or so skaters caught the last days of the season at the famed ice rink as cheerful flags fluttered gently.

  I heard the muted ring of my phone and the efficient sound of my assistant’s voice. In the beautiful spring morning light, the moment seemed a snapshot in some future album of how work once was. Even the dust was suspended in air, as if waiting for something to happen.

  * * *

  When my boss took the seat across my walnut desk to go over some routine matters, my mind reentered my body and snapped to attention. I focused intently on the business before us. We discussed the upcoming list of books we were publishing and which authors would need special attention. I updated him on our new staff members, pleased to report that they were all catching on quickly. He agreed. A few other odds and ends were reported back and forth. I was glad everything was running so smoothly. As he was rising from his seat, about to go into another meeting, I said, “Oh, yes, there’s one more thing.”

  He sank back into the chair and eyed his watch.

  “I’m resigning.” My heart pounded in my chest. I hadn’t planned to break the news yet, but I couldn’t hold it in. The reverie of the past few minutes dissolved into panic, as if I’d suddenly found myself on the crosstown bus without clothes on.

  He sank back into his seat and looked at me, head slightly to one side, clearly indicating it was my turn to say something.

  “I don’t have another job—it’s nothing like that,” I stammered, not wanting to offend him, even if I’d already stunned him.

  “It’s just that we—Sandy, my husband, and I—well, we want to have a life. We thought we might do something different. In a small company. Maybe even move. Take a trip first. You know, that old after-college-cross-country thing.” I was babbling. But I was also making sense for the first time in a long time.

  After a few moments expressing my desire to leave everything in the best possible shape, my boss left to report the news to his boss. I once again looked at the beautiful day outside my window and smiled, knowing I’d soon be out there.

  * * *

  As I left the office that day, I knew I was not dreaming. I was living my dream. My corporate days had ended.

  Making a Life

  After fifty-two combined years in the corporate fast lane as executive vice president and editor-in-chief respectively, my husband, Sandy MacGregor and I decided to cash out, review our options, set some new goals, see what was over the horizon. The process of deciding to do this was both slow and fast. It began with a shock. One afternoon Sandy appeared in my office looking pasty. His hands were shaking, he was sweating profusely. I was afraid he would die. Then he told me the news. He had just been forced to resign, several months shy of his twentieth anniversary with his firm. Like many other people, in similar situations, we found ourselves numb with disbelief that this could be happening to him, after many years and much dedication. I wanted to make sure it could never happen to either of us again. Our perspective on life was given a major tilt.

  The mornings immediately following the news were stilted with routine. Sandy still got up early, put on a suit and tie, grabbed
his briefcase, and sailed out the door, brave and robot-like. It pained me to watch the man I loved merely go through the motions of living. Instead of going to his office, he spent his days at an out-placement center sending out his résumé, making phone calls, trying to sound cheerful. While he searched for a job, he simultaneously started looking into what it would take to buy into a small publishing company. After all those years in megacorporations, my husband yearned to go back to a small town and be part of a community. The idea of owning something, creating something that was ours, grew on us. With amazement, I watched him progress from burned out to fired up over a period of six or seven months. We developed an idea of working together, in which we would split responsibilities according to our inclinations—which, luckily, were very distinct. Sandy had no interest in editing or design, while I would rather eat pins than read spreadsheets.

  While Sandy continued to look for a job, I continued working, assuming our lives wouldn’t really change all that much. A broker friend began sending us information on various companies. One in New England seemed ideal. Although the town was tiny, it was near a university, a major medical center, and several ski areas. I glibly admitted to the fair possibility of life after Manhattan there for me, a girl born and bred on that lovely island. After all, in addition to all the quaintness you could handle, there was one ethnic restaurant, a bookstore, and a movie theater less than thirty miles away.

  After seven months of searching, Sandy got a job offer in New York. While the idea of having our own business still held our dreams, it seemed irrational to turn down a concrete position. The company was big enough to be challenging, small enough to be personal, and young enough to be fun. Publishing books for the children’s market seemed a cheery way for him to retrieve his balance. Sandy once again put on the suit and tie, picked up the briefcase, and went to work. This time it was in a charming brownstone, and he had a bunny on his business card. The notion of being in his own business, however, stayed with him.

  * * *

  Sandy’s story had involved a rapid rise on the financial side of the business world. He first learned the ropes at the Ford Motor Company in his hometown of Dearborn, Michigan. Then RCA recruited him to come east, where he got involved in launching the first modern telephone system in Alaska while the new pipeline project was getting started. His monthly trips to Anchorage and Fairbanks were a heady experience. His next assignment was to develop business plans with a book company owned by RCA. Ultimately, he was seduced into publishing full time and loved it. His areas of responsibility included running the day-to-day operations of his company, which was cited year after year as one of the hundred best companies to work for in America.

  All that began to change when the chairman, Sandy’s mentor of many years, was forced to resign and a new man came in above him. What followed was so incredibly predictable, it could have been lifted directly from the pages of a bad novel. As they say in those opuses: It was only a matter of time, the handwriting was on the wall, his goose was cooked, the gig was, literally, up. It seemed that no matter how hard he worked or how devoted he was to the house he’d helped build for twenty years, he would always be seen as part of the old team, the wrong team. Over a period of four years, I watched his natural enthusiasm stilled and his joy in going to work squelched. It was no longer one of the hundred best companies to work for.

  * * *

  My résumé was that of a typical baby boomer. My seventy-six million cohorts and I had had entire school systems enlarged to accommodate us. Radio stations completely revised their playlists to appease us. We emboldened each other to wear skirts that were shorter, hair that was longer, as we gleefully outraged our parents. I went to Woodstock, at least in part, to see if my father could take it. Testing limits is part of growing up, I later learned in Psych 101. Then we graduated from college, got rid of Nixon, our nemesis, and thought we would make business-as-usual obsolete.

  A funny thing happened to me on the way to the office: I became ambitious, a word I was too modest to use, but the feeling sprouted anyhow. Joining the workforce in a low-paying position at a glamorous publishing company suited my approach/avoidance attitude perfectly: I got to do all the work, but I hadn’t sold out because I was hardly being paid. Soon work was all I did. Suddenly the same father who had worried I would spend the rest of my life stringing love beads called to complain that I worked all weekend and took too many manuscripts home with me at night. Working thrilled me: I met famous authors, dined with agents, predicted trends and best sellers, acquired books that became national favorites, and adored my colleagues. We traveled in a pack and cheered each other on. Promotions came, elevating me from assistant, to assistant to the editor-in-chief, to editor-in-chief in a mere fifteen years.

  By the time I was being paid well for my talents, oddly enough, some of the charge had gone out of the air. I had the privilege of working for the best companies, the brightest people, and with tremendously talented writers. Yet mergers, acquisitions, and the reshuffling of both staff and authors from house to house created a sense of upheaval and disquiet in the industry. Huge conglomerates were blamed for depersonalizing a very intimate business. Layoffs made everyone edgy, and the continuity that had kept us together disappeared. I mourned the departure of great colleagues. While I survived several reorganizations and the eventual dissolution of my division, I felt miserable when I was told to let several members of my staff go. When Sandy lost his job, I lost my stomach for the whole thing. Suddenly my hippie roots were beginning to show.

  * * *

  Until that moment we looked like a head-on portrait of a two-career couple who had achieved a high degree of corporate success. We were overworked, stressed out, high-strung, short-tempered, and had too many things to do and not enough time to do them in. Now we were forced to blink, to look at our lives in a three-dimensional perspective without the familiar grounding of Sandy’s job. Everything started to look unhinged and askew to us. Clearly we were no longer in control of our lives. Perhaps things had gotten out of whack a lot earlier and we had just been forced to stop and notice it.

  How had it come about that our life was so out of our hands? Why were we living this crazy life anyhow? Was it really that insane? Wasn’t everyone busy, booked, and berserk? (If I hadn’t been so busy editing all those self-help books over the years, maybe I would have picked up more knowledge of time and stress management from them. I also should have been thin and rich by now, I figured.)

  I flipped through my calendar and my mind to review the life we had created for ourselves. I had to admit we had chosen it for ourselves: no one swooped into the bedroom every morning and commanded me to get to the gym by six forty-five so I could read The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal while I biked before my breakfast meeting. After that there would be six to eight meetings, appointments, interviews, and personnel reviews each day. Thirty to forty phone calls was normal. Lunch with an agent or author was the only way to talk over a new project without being interrupted. Dinners were good for that as well, and maybe we could squeeze a friend or two into the party. A week like that would not have been an especially busy one since neither of us had gone on a business trip. For a while Sandy would go to England frequently, often for just the day. On weekends we would go to our house at the lake, where we would more or less drop, limp and lifeless from exhaustion, in front of Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs—if we could stay up that late. By the next day we pulled ourselves together to garden, do minor repairs, work on a few manuscripts, read a batch of proposals, review some financial reports, entertain friends and family. That was our so-called life.

  One day, after he was working again but still fantasizing about his own business, Sandy did some calculations. He told me that if we sold the lake house, trimmed our restaurant and entertainment expenses, and quit recreational shopping, we would have enough put by that we wouldn’t have to work for a year or so. We’d still have the New York apartment I’d had for over twenty years. The place i
n the city was small, about nine hundred square feet, but it was secure and in a neighborhood we liked. A chilly feeling settled over us. Had we been pushing ourselves, putting up with increasingly pressurized situations, allowing our working time to absorb our life like a black hole, in order to support a house? It was time for a little life review.

  It was a nice house. On a lake. A little more than an hour from the city, full of charm and light. But it was just a house. It was our major asset. It was also, in this unadorned scenario, our major burden, complete with a big mortgage, hefty maintenance costs, and mega-tax bills. Our other obligations were minimal. Our kids—that is to say, Sandy’s kids—were in their late twenties and financially independent. My parents were in their eighties and fiercely independent in every way. Struck by a bolt of lightning as in a cartoon, the little bulb over my head lit: I wanted to make a life, not just a living. If selling the first house I’d ever owned was the financial linchpin for making that possible, I would have to consider doing it.

  For months the fantasy of leaving the city for that little company in New England grew. We imagined how perfect a life it would be: We’d be within driving distance of New York, near family and friends; we’d rent a cozy old place there, sublet our city apartment, and sell the house. As I tried to open up my mind to the possibility of living somewhere other than New York, however, panic set in. I had gone to college in New England but came home as fast as I could. After graduate school in New York, I had tried living in my aunt’s beautiful 1827 farmhouse in Vermont. That lasted one winter. I ran back to midtown screaming something about boredom and mud. The population of the town we were thinking of living in was the same as that of our apartment building. I figured I was either in deep denial or just plain old-fashioned crazy. We made an offer on the business.

  Now, on a bad day at work, I had my secret life to keep me amused. I pictured my overwrought colleagues tumbling over icy moguls on the slopes near our new home. I mentally threatened late authors by banishing them to the barn to milk cows if they didn’t produce manuscripts on time. Maybe I was just losing my grip. Sandy’s excitement grew and grew. Having grown up in suburban Michigan, he’d never been a hundred percent happy in a Manhattan apartment. The idea of living in the country, where he could have a workshop and a place to park the car that didn’t run four hundred dollars a month, really appealed to him. I was, in the words of a friend’s mother, a place bigamist. I could never decide to opt for one over the other. I’d grown up in a Manhattan apartment and loved the thrill of the city, the energy of midtown—though my happiest memories of childhood all seemed to have taken place in the country. From the time I was eight through most of my college years, I spent summers at various camps, which I adored. Tasting the outdoors was not the same as trusting it, however, and I continued to feel more sure of which subway to take than which wild berry to eat.