He Never Wanted Anything Else

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There are people who wander into this industry.

And then there are people like my husband.

From the first time he touched a computer, this was it. No second guesses, no alternate paths, no quiet wondering about what else might have fit better. Software was not a job he found. It was the thing he recognized.

I was never like that.

I’ve stepped sideways more than once. Law school. Culinary school. Different versions of what a life could be. I’ve always held a sense that I could do many things, even if I didn’t ultimately choose them.

He didn’t need that kind of range. He had direction.

So when he was laid off in January, it wasn’t just a job that disappeared. It was an interruption in something that had stayed constant for decades.

We talked about the future.

Not in big declarations, but in small, steady conversations. What would it look like to continue, but on his own terms? What would it mean to build instead of join?

For years, our family has called itself SAIL. Just the first letters of our names, but it stuck. It felt like us.

So we gave the idea a name before we gave it a plan.

Sail Away Studios.

I helped where I could. I used Adobe Firefly to put together a logo that felt like motion, like direction, like something that could carry forward. I built out a six week project board, something concrete to move through while the days of unemployment started to feel longer.

None of that was the point.

The point was this:

He still gets to do the thing he has always wanted to do.

Only now, he gets to decide how.

And that feels like the beginning of something, not the end.

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Alison + Wiggins