Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

–Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky (Discworld, #32)

It’s inevitable, the changes that come our way, which is I suppose the most infuriating and frustrating part about changes.  Can’t predict them, wouldn’t want to.  Try as we might, nothing stays the same (and I’ll quit with the cliches now).

For the last year, we’ve debated about what to do with our office.  Four years ago, when we moved in, we were a small group of 3 with a plucky assistant who walked our dog and kept us going.  We were busy and after seeking advice from our CPA and our financial planner, decided to move into commercial space.  All systems, go!

And go they did.  We were quickly at capacity and working all the time.  But it wasn’t enough to hire more help or to outsource anything.  It was just busy.  Our partner had a baby and didn’t come back to work.  Our assistant found another job out of the area (boo! Laura, come home!).  It was just us.  Then 2013 happened and the bottom fell out.  We sort of folded in on ourselves, collapsing from the stress of the prior 4 years. Panic attacks, depression, no work, an ailing dog and a back injury meant we struggled. A lot.

In some ways, we’re still recovering from that.  While we figured out what to do, many days our office sat empty, waiting for us.  We worked from home, while on vacation, or wherever we were at the time.  Less and less, that meant working at the office.

And then came Eden.  She’s a handful sometimes and this last week, she’s been sick with an infection known as Puppy Strangles. She went from a ball full of energy 2 weeks ago to lethargic, uninterested in playing, eating or annoying Zion virtually overnight.  Trips to the vet, medication, cleaning an oozing wound.  It’s been exhausting.  We know she’ll be ok, that this is treatable and she is already showing signs of feeling better.  But we also know that we want to be able to take off with her and go to the beach, or the mountains.  With our office obligations, we haven’t been able to do any of the things that make self-employment worth the hassle, namely freedom.

When our landlord asked us if we wanted to keep our office space, we had many conversations about how important it was or wasn’t to maintain our “commercial space.”  Would people think we’ve failed? That we’re closing up?  I hope not because we’re still working, still cranking out product, still hustling for new projects, still doing what we’ve always done: good, solid work for clients.  I still love what I do and Rob continues to amaze me at the way he can juggle multiple clients, technical documents, deadlines, billing, and turn around to write witty quips about our life together.

But now, we’re ready to come home, after all this time of being away.  Our business, at the core, will always be about us, the work we do together, no matter where we do it. The office space didn’t make us a legitimate business; WE did that through many hours of hard work, learning, struggling, writing, designing, reading, researching, prospecting.  And we’ll keep working as we always have, only now there will be no guilt for designing a brochure in my pajamas.