Many principles guide me through life, but there’s one motto to which I’ve always subscribed: Expect the worst … that way you’ll be prepared. And, if by good fortune, the worst doesn’t happen, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
You may think that’s pessimistic, and I guess on the surface it is, but when you adopt it as a creed, you find that happy accidents happen all around you.
One of my recent serendipitous byproducts was thanks to the pandemic. Though I’ve been a remote worker for nearly a decade, my husband was tied to his Washington, D.C. office, which meant our family lived in one of the metro area’s super-pricey, traffic-nightmare suburbs. However, during those tough days, he, too, started working remotely permanently, and suddenly we found ourselves with a freedom…