A very good question, thanks for asking! I think about that a lot. This answer is going to get a little bit deep (for me) so please forgive me.
My career later took me to Los Angeles in 2009 and then to Seattle in 2018. Both my wife and I gave a lot to our careers. My wife also worked at Apple, but had a huge change of heart and went back to school to get a masters in social work. She was also an Army Reservist and was deployed to Iraq a couple of times and various other spots in the world. Regardless of ones opinion of America's foreign adventures, she felt that she was making a difference in the lives of people (she was in Civil Affairs) when she deployed.
After a few years in Seattle at Amazon, we both decided to step back from the fast pace of life. We moved to Tucson, AZ, she worked with veterans and I did some consulting and taught programming to adults wanting a career change for Startup Tucson. Life finally seemed pretty good!
Sadly, my wife passed from cancer a few weeks ago, so I often reflect on our thirty years together. How much time was consumed with the frenzy of startups and Apple, etc? If I could go back in time and spend every possible moment with her rock climbing, camping, skiing, holding hands, working with the homeless, enjoying a slow Sunday reading by the fire, etc. I would do that in an instant.
She was 51 and I am 53. We both thought we had a lot of time left! As for me, I am entirely unexceptional. I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time for a lot of things. My advice to anyone who may be in a similar position to what I was in a few years ago is to take a pause, zoom out and look at the big picture. We love to talk about IPOs, exits, deal sheets, cap tables and more. This is all fleeting. We only really have each other and the most important capital is human capital, especially when provided by the ones you love and who love you.
Thanks for sharing and raises a lot of points people miss about work-life balance.
A good friend shared Brian Dyson's 1991 commencement speech recently, of which I will quote this section:
Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them — work, family, health, friends and spirit — and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls ~ family. health, friends and spirit — are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked. nicked. damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.
