Somewhere between selling the house and moving into the new one, I made a new rule for myself.

If we couldn't pay cash for it, we didn't buy it.

Simple. Almost stupid how simple it was. Our savings account still had a lot of numbers in it. They just all happened to be zeroes.

So I started carrying cash like it was 1995. Fifty bucks left over at the end of the week meant we could go out to eat. One pizza, everybody shares. Nobody gets their own meal, because splitting a pizza four ways is a family bonding activity if you say it with enough confidence.

I told myself this was fine. Millions of families do exactly this every single day and come out the other side no worse for it. I believed that. I still believe that.

But somewhere underneath the belief was this quiet, nagging guilt. Sorry kids, no soda tonight, water's got electrolytes too. I never once let my son go without track shoes or my daughter go without art supplies, or other necessary things. The needs got covered every time. It was all the in-between stuff that quietly disappeared.

Nobody in my house ever really complained about it. Which somehow made it worse. I was the one who took the extravagant dining out experience away, and I was the one who felt it.

Meanwhile I was still out delivering packages, still grinding, still telling myself that the freedom was right around the corner. And also, quietly, kind of embarrassingly, applying for corporate jobs I didn't actually want.

I picked up a couple interviews here and there. Nothing serious. It felt like window shopping. Look, but don't buy.

Then one afternoon, sitting in that Amazon van, my phone rang. A real offer. Actual salary, actual title, actual start date.

The number was lower than what I used to make. The job itself was nothing I wanted to spend my days doing. But here's the thing about not having a mortgage anymore. Even a smaller salary goes further when you're not handing a third of it to the bank every month. On paper, this was the best financial position I'd been in, maybe ever.

I said yes. I didn't negotiate. I didn't ask for a day to think it over. Just yes, thank you, I'll see you soon.

Then I called my wife.

I could hear it in her voice before she even said anything. Relief. Pure, exhausted relief. And that told me everything I needed to know. This wasn't about what I wanted anymore. This was about what my family needed, and apparently what they needed was for Dad to go back and be miserable in a very specific, very well-compensated way.

I hung up the phone, sat there in that van, and lost it completely. I mean, absolute meltdown.

I'm talking full sob. The kind where you're glad nobody's around to see it. Some of those tears were joy, real joy, because I could picture saying yes to a shopping trip or a dinner out without doing math in my head first. But mixed right in with the joy was something a lot heavier. Dread. I knew, sitting in that van, exactly what I'd just signed up for.

That night I told the kids.

"Cool, Dad. Good job."

That was it. Not "please don't do this to yourself again." Not "we'd rather have you happy than have extra stuff." Just a shrug and a good job, like I'd won a raffle.

And that's when it actually hit home for me. My kids look at me to make problems go away. To make things feel secure. That's not a bad thing, that's just what a dad is supposed to be for them. But it meant the pressure I'd been feeling wasn't in my head. It was real, and it was mine to carry, and the only move available was to shut up and go do the thing.

I put in my two weeks at Amazon. Every side hustle got shelved. And I spent the next few days doing the hardest kind of work there is, which is trying to convince yourself that a decision you already made was the right one.

The job I accepted was a global role. If you're keeping score, that means early mornings on calls with Europe, a full day with the US team, and evenings wrapping up with Asia. I had somehow found my way back into the exact soul-crushing schedule I swore I'd never touch again, except the one silver lining was that I was allowed to work from home. That meant I could be there for dinner. I was there when the kids got home from school. And yeah, I could pay for things again without doing mental gymnastics first.

But underneath all of that, the old dread came right back. Seventy hour weeks. Work I didn't care about. People I didn’t care about. Meetings to talk about nothing. And that same tired old philosophy creeping back into my head, the one that got me here in the first place. Grind it out, stack the 401k, maybe ten more years of this and then I get to rest. I’d fallen back into the good old American dream. Work till you die.

I'd been undefeated through the house, through the Design Center, through every dumb dollar that got spent on antique bronze fixtures. And here I was, two weeks into a new job, already counting down years again.

Next week, I'll tell you about the best thing that ever happened to me.

I got laid off.

It's not too late. Let's move.

Dave Otani