An Update from Christine: Living the Life I Want

In the summer of 2018, as my family left Seattle and started making our way to Indonesia for our year-long adventure there, I sent Eva an email with the subject, “Heading your way, sort of!” Australia would be practically next door, after all.

We eventually met up in person and ended up reconnecting over much more than geography. In 2015, Eva had launched The Life I Want storytelling project—in her words, “to celebrate those who are living the life they want, and to inspire others to do the same.” In 2017, I had quit the job I’d been working toward my whole career, wondering whether work was compatible with life at all. 

We found that we were holding many of the same questions: how to keep our values and our families at the center of our lives while doing work that matters; how to navigate the larger forces at play that make de-prioritizing our jobs so difficult. In 2019, we decided to join forces as writing partners, exploring these questions together on this platform.

Then, of course, in March of 2020, we found ourselves wholly focused on overseeing distance learning for our respective sets of twins and navigating the relentless waves of societal upheaval.

In the period that followed, the inquiry at the heart of the Life I Want project moved to the center of public discourse. What role should work play in our lives and societies? For some, the pandemic stripped away the commute and the travel and the office and the in-person community, leaving just… the work. Was it worth all that we put into it?

For others, the pandemic finally toppled the house-of-cards life of work without predictable schedules or healthcare or leave policies or collective bargaining—in professions that were lauded as “essential” and applauded with pots and pans, but lacked the support needed to make life livable.

In other words, everyone realized that work is broken.

The landscape shifted. The U.S. showed that Universal Basic Income, an experiment often derided as socialist, is doable, helpful, and popular. Workers began quitting in droves; others unionized. Companies were called upon to take measurable and meaningful actions to address longstanding racial injustice. The Great Resignation took hold. 

Amidst all of that, my family started building a new life in McMinnville, Oregon. In doing so, I took to heart what I’ve learned from this project: the power of building community around unmet needs, from Rue Mapp, Leslie Forde, and Sheree Rubinstein; the importance of being true to yourself rather than others’ expectations, from Keri Tietjen, Cyrus Habib, and my late dear ol’ Uncle Ken; the many cracks in our systems of work and capitalism, from Chloe McKenzie, Lauren Sandler, and Marc Weinstein; and the examples of people shaping their work around what truly matters to them: Serena Bian, Donovan Ervin, Diana Riggs and Todd Severson, John Kim, Katherine Goldstein, and Reverend Christopher Dela Cruz. 

And of course, I learned so much from Eva’s explorations of mental health, pandemic life lessons, gender equality, and how centering care could save us all.

With those lessons in mind, I’ve been playful and open to experimenting with short-term commitments, and careful and deliberate in making long-term ones. Now, I have a few pieces in place that feel right, grounding me in my new community, using precisely the skills I want to use towards the impact I want to have, and mostly contained to the hours while my kids are in school.

I’m teaching in Linfield University’s business program; serving on McMinnville’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion advisory committee; volunteering in my kids’ classrooms; advocating for gun safety; and assistant coaching the local girls’ rugby club (who won the state championships in the spring, thank you very much). And, until November 6, training for the New York City marathon; and next year, updating my first book for a tenth anniversary edition.

That’s more than enough. I feel like I am living the life I want, but I also feel like the creative urgency for writing about it has left me. As hard as it is to quit, I’ve gotten pretty good at it, and know that it is time.

Eva will continue The Life I Want project. I am so grateful to her for letting me into this inquiry, and to all of you who have supported us as a writing team. We have loved collaborating, learning from each other’s working and writing styles, and exploring our thoughts with each other about life, work, running, wine, boy-girl twins, expatriate life, Commonwealth husbands, corporate sustainability, and so much more.

I’m excited to jump to the other side of the proverbial writing table and join you all as a member of this community, on this journey to create the lives we want and the world we want. I know that with Eva’s rigor of thought and pen, and deep and genuine passion for writing stories that matter, she will keep moving all of us further along that path.

Photo: Christine with the Valley Panthers Rugby Club, the girls’ high school team she started assistant coaching last spring.