…I was working for Microsoft, the money was good and I did it so that my four children would be able to live in a small rural village near all their grandparents, cousins etc.

It was a ‘sacrifice’ of sorts (sometimes it took 2.5 hours just to get home from the southern part of Dublin out to north Meath where we lived). By the time I’d left secondary school I’d been to 7 different schools in England and Ireland (parents moving etc).I’ve never kept up with school friends, those relationships were always transitory, and I felt I never had a strong sense of stability as I was always moving schools.

I didn’t want that for my kids and all four went to the same local village primary school and the two boys and two girls went to their same secondary schools. When my eldest son was married his best man was a chap he’d been friends with since he was five years of age. That meant a lot to me.

The karma in this situation was that I moved on to Dell and worked from home for nearly fourteen years. None of my global team were in Ireland, my boss was in Austin and I’d already had a dedicated home office set up etc. I was SO lucky and when Covid hit I’d already been 10 years into walking the 15 seconds from my bedroom to my office