Today Hollee and I welcome Beth, who didn’t want to wait for marriage and motherhood to begin looking for a well-balanced life. Beth is a successful lawyer now trying her hand in business — and she is creating the life she wants right now. Our gratitude to her for sharing her story. — Becky

It is not without trepidation that I lend my voice to this blog since it is easy to feel like an interloper. I sit on the sidelines watching, mostly in abject awe, as my friends balance their personal and professional ambitions against their goals and priorities as wives, husbands, partners and parents.  I am not yet someone’s wife, nor am I lucky enough to have had children, though I remain optimistic that both of those events lie in my future.   Despite this, I have made a concerted effort to create the space in which I hope all of that shall come to pass.

As a first-born child, it never really occurred to me to challenge the natural order of events. Consequently, I had always suffered from what I like to call “the next logical step syndrome.”  If I worked hard in high school, I would go to a good college. Check. If I did well in college, I would go to a good law school.  And if I did well in law school, and it was of interest, I would get a federal clerkship and work in a big firm as a litigator.  Check, check, check and check again. What I failed to realize, despite my years of education, was that, at some point, I might have to choose.

For me, that moment came as I was working into the early morning hours (again) at my law firm in New York.  And, in a desperate move to procrastinate, I looked back at my billable calendar for the previous seven months and realized that there had only been three weekends in which I had not worked both Saturday and Sunday.  This was not unusual – I was a fifth year associate – and the pace of the job, the vast intelligence and cogent strength of the people with whom I worked, and the extraordinary depth of responsibility with which I was trusted,  were well known to me. Moreover, it was something I sought.   All were necessary in order to build a foundation toward partnership — which was, of course, my next logical step.

By any external measure, I was a success in my career and, if I am truly honest, I loved that success.

But I was not dating; I was not making adequate time for vacations, friends, reading, and family.   And, in that moment, I sat back, and questioned where I was headed. I asked whether it was the right option, whether my life was of my own creation, my choices conscious — or whether I was, by not making space for myself outside of my career, defining my life in absentia.

I would be remiss if I failed to point out that I worked with many people who were able to find balance.  They successfully navigated the law-firm world complemented by rich home and family environments, each of which elevated the other.  To even intimate that one cannot find completeness as a litigator at a big firm would be irresponsible, unfair, and hyperbolic to an unnecessary extreme.  I simply realized that this environment would not afford me, based on my own internal make-up, the same balance.

And so I made a decision to change.  For me, it was a slight change of career, a change of physical place and a change to how I lived my life.  I went in-house as a corporate lawyer in Los Angeles — a new path where the learning curve was high, thus affording intellectual challenge. This gave me professional depth.  However, my work hours allowed time to date and see friends and join philanthropies.  I was now physically closer to my family.  I started taking classes at UCLA because there were things I wanted to learn. If I made 7 p.m. dinner plans, having to miss them for work was the exception.

It would be overly simplistic to attribute the seismic shift in my life to the external movement of job and location alone – it was not simply a matter of changing my place that changed my station.  What I believe to be most different about this decision, and for which I am continually grateful, was that this conscious choice meant focusing on what could be. I was making my life as full and interesting as possible, and with room for a husband and family – and I was making it possible for them to happen in their own moment.

That initial move to Los Angeles was six years ago.  And I have changed jobs once again, this time leaving the law behind and trying my hand at business. I am not yet married, and I still have not yet had children.  And, in truth, neither is a sum certain in my future.  But my measure of a successful life remains unchanged.  I have a life that is rich in professional challenges, and my cup is full with friends, family, traveling adventures, and learning.  I sit around tables on Friday nights with friends or talk to those far away, amazed at the depth of their commitment to their partners, or their desire to find life partners, as they embrace their lives with children, or discuss their children to come.

And I look back on my Friday nights on the 34^th floor, looking out at the office lights across the street, and remember fondly the woman that I was. I am thankful that I learned from her path – and took a chance at a new one in which my future, my next logical step, is entirely of my own design. — Beth

Beth is choosing to keep her full name out of the blog so that she, rather than Google Search, can share the contours of her personal growth and ambitions with a first or second date.  But she assures you she is real, and still learning, and still working to achieve balance.