When I was in my 30s, I lost my job.
What I found instead changed everything.
At the time, we had a five-year-old, a two-year-old, and another one on the way.
The company I worked for got acquired. The new company didn’t need two Human Resource IT Managers.
They gave me a choice:
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Move to Memphis and take a lower-level job
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Or stay through the end of the year, “babysit the systems” during the transition… and walk away with a one-year severance package
I remember thinking:
Is this what it came to?
All the long hours. The travel. The weekends.
And now I’m babysitting systems?
When I could be moving on and getting a new and better job right now?
(For the record… I took the babysitting deal. One-year severance has a way of clearing your head.)
Here’s what I didn’t expect:
Babysitting systems is a lot easier than babysitting young kids.
Which meant something opened up that I didn’t see coming…
Time.
The Breakfast That Changed Everything
One morning, before taking Kenny to kindergarten and Joe to preschool, I took them to breakfast at McDonald’s.
Nothing fancy. Just breakfast.
Something clicked.
I watched Kenny carefully cut his pancakes into quarters…
Then his sausage into eighths…
Then build what I can only describe as eight perfectly engineered breakfast tacos.
I watched Joe dip his hash browns into ketchup like it was a five-star culinary experience.
I just sat there… taking it in.
The laughter.
The focus.
The joy over something so simple.
That’s when it hit me:
This is it. This is what matters.
Not the meetings.
Not the travel.
Not the “important” stuff I thought I couldn’t miss.
This.
The Decision
So we made it a tradition.
Every week—McDonald’s breakfast before school.
But it didn’t stop there.
I showed up to the baseball games.
The school plays.
The scout events.
And I made a decision right then:
This doesn’t end when I get my next job.
No matter what comes next… this stays.
Funny How Things Work Out
Life has a funny way of working things out.
As the year wrapped up—and right around the time our third son was born—the company came back and said:
“Hey… we’ve got a program we need you to manage. You can stay based in Cincinnati.”
Less stress.
More money.
A completely different perspective.
But the real change didn’t happen in a boardroom.
It happened at a McDonald’s breakfast table.
A couple hundred Egg McMuffins later…
It’s still the best decision I ever made.
Your Move
You don’t need a job loss to figure this out.
You don’t need a wake-up call.
Just ask yourself one question:
What are your Egg McMuffins?
And more importantly…
When are you going to make time for them?
P.S. Kenny still makes sausage pancake tacos.
Joe still dips his hash browns.