Shoot for the moon, you will end up in space, or something like that

Today I stumbled upon an email from my previous-manager, dated December 9^th, 2009.  The subject title was simply ‘Germany Office‘, and it was her letting me know that there are at least 4 finance people working in Munich under the manager Brian C.  The reason she sent this email to me?  We had been discussing my 5-year plan, and apparently I had mentioned Germany to her. 

Fast forward 3 years (almost to the date) – I am living and working out of Munich, Germany, and am coming up on my 1 year Germanniversary.  And no longer do we only have 4 finance people: we have closer to 60 with the 2011 acquisition of Intel Mobile Communications (from Infineon).  And wouldn’t you know it – That Brian C. she mentioned is now my manager.

So what’s my point?  I don’t really know.  But it does resonate with me that for the longest time, Noah and I kept mentioning to people that we might want to move to Germany one day- including, apparently, my old boss.  And instead of just being satisfied with how our lives were going on their own (which, by the way, Phoenix was still fabulous) – we decided to make our strongest effort to move to Germany.  That way, if it didn’t pan out for us, we knew we gave it our best.  Plus we had to try to avoid looking like we were full of it since we had mentioned a potential move to so many people.

When we found out we both found work in Germany, and knew it would work out for us, there were so many people who told us how lucky we are.  Sure, luck was part of it.  It’s true that being an American with a good education (thanks mom and dad!) definitely gave me a leg up.  And the fact we both were able to find jobs?  Definitely some luck in that.  Oh, and Intel recently acquiring a company in Munich – 100% luck for me.  But if we only left it up to luck, I guarantee we wouldn’t be here. 

A casual remark to my manager that I would like to work in Munich one day didn’t get me here.  There was a lot of hard work behind the scenes required to take full advantage of our good luck.  I had to brush up my resume and interview skills, use my acquired network with Intel to reach out to people, and fly myself (yes, I paid) out to Munich to meet everyone and land myself a position in a newly acquired company.  And if necessary, I was ready to approach companies outside of Intel as the next step to get me here.

Also – I couldn’t keep track of the number of times either Noah or I wanted to throw in the towel and go the ‘easy’ route – staying where we were.  Frustrating calls in our broken German to set up our Internet (and often getting hung up on); moving to an apartment that was completely stripped of everything – including lights – in the middle of winter; trying to coordinate moving our dogs 3,000 miles away; I could go on.   Sometimes the challenges made us lose sight of why we chose this crazy route in the first place.  But looking back – these are amazing ‘problems’ to have, because they accompany a move to Europe! 

I am not saying everyone should go make a vision board or anything like that, but maybe I am trying to remind people that if they have a dream, why not go balls to the wall trying to make it happen?  Yeah, you might fail, but you fail knowing you tried your best, and you won’t have to think ‘what if?’.  Also – you might actually succeed, and find yourself in a completely new and exciting stage of life that you would have never imagined yourself in.