In the four years following my divorce, my role at publishing house Agora continued to expand. Now I was a partner in the International Living business, rather than editor, and also managing the health division I’d launched.
I’d put my marriage behind me and had fallen hard for a man at work. As my best friend, Beth, had warned me often throughout that relationship, “With a workplace romance, in the end, it’s always the woman who has to leave.”
She was right. When I finally admitted to myself that I needed to move on, the only way I could imagine breaking things off was by going far away.
“You need to pull a geographic,” Beth agreed.
How, though, could I start over somewhere new without giving up the career I’d been working hard and long to build?
By this time, Agora owner Bill Bonner was not only my partner and mentor but also like a second father. Bill was witty, charming, and gallant, a larger-than-life character who told a great story, loved to travel, and prioritized ideas, the more contrarian the better.
Bill eschewed popular culture and anything trendy and prized the traditional but not the conventional. He thought big and outside any box I’d encountered.
I, too, had a huge appetite for discovery, though I’d never known it. Bill liked architecture, another interest that, when he introduced me to it, I realized I shared. On a business trip to Santa Fe for meetings with the managers of the book business Agora owned there, Bill rented a car and drove us to Albuquerque to see the first house he’d ever built, which, he seemed really happy to note, was still standing, perched on the side of the hill where he’d left it.
Bill also played guitar, including at office get-togethers, and had made a living for a short time in his 20s as a busker in the Paris Metro. He wore a homburg hat and, in winter, a gray wool scarf that he tied the way the French do.
I’d been at Agora 13 years when my years-long office romance imploded. Bill had known about my relationship with my colleague all along, and, when I came to him to say I’d finally realized it had to end because it had no future, Bill responded immediately to make a recommendation, suggesting the situation had been weighing on his mind as much as mine.
“I’d say a big change of scenery is what the doctor ordered,” he said. “You need a break from Baltimore.”
It was unanimous. Beth, Bill, and I all thought a move was in my future.
But where to go?
Bill proposed two options. I could reposition to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to work with Agora’s book business, or I could move to Ireland to run the EU base he wanted to establish.
Those might seem like dramatic options—moving as a single mom with a young daughter to the other side of the country or the other side of the Atlantic—but, as soon as Bill put them on the table, I knew right away that I was going to make one of those leaps.
Though I hadn’t lived anywhere else, Baltimore was not my destiny, and, until this point, especially since the end of my marriage, I’d been biding time until the path to where I was really meant to be presented itself. Bill’s bold suggestions put me at the fork that would get me on that path.
Or, at least, the exhilarating opportunities Bill had set forth would move me on from Baltimore. Finally I had the chance I’d craved to venture out and see more of the world.
The question now was how to choose which side of the fork to follow.
Having been editor and then publisher of a magazine focused on options for Americans interested in living and investing overseas, the idea of moving to a new country wasn’t nearly as big a deal for me as it might have been for most people. I’d been advising others on how to relocate overseas for a decade. It was time to take my own advice.
Besides, I’d been to Santa Fe and could take it or leave it. Though I’d never seen Ireland, I’d been infatuated by storybook tales of Celtic castles and kings since I was a young girl. If I were making a big move, I’d make the biggest move possible. Ireland would be my new course.
Bill’s assistant put an Irish flag in the center of the conference table in our main board room, and Agora’s Executive Committee and I spent two nights a week around it for months conceiving a strategy to open our EU outpost.
Our plan hinged on our application being accepted by Ireland’s Investment and Development Agency (IDA), which was offering tax incentives to foreign companies that set up businesses in the country and hired Irish staff.
That’s why Agora was going to Ireland—for a better corporate tax rate. That and Bill’s family was Irish.
The IDA approved our application and gave us three options for where to base our operation—Sligo, Galway, and Waterford. Another choice. I’d need to go have a look in person.
Agora organized tours in places we identified as most appealing for Americans interested in going abroad. I’d plan one to Ireland and offer it to my International Living readers. Twenty-five of them signed up to visit the Emerald Isle with me, and I decided to bring my daughter Kaitlin and my parents along. Ireland would be Kaitlin’s new home, too, and I wanted her and my parents to be part of the adventure from the start.
The schedule I put together had us flying to Dublin then traveling for 10 days in Waterford, Cork, Galway, Sligo, and Belfast before returning to the capital.
My mother, father, and Kaitlin were excited for the trip, but I’m not sure they believed it was the start of a trans-Atlantic move. That was okay.
I’d bring them around…
Until next time,
Kathleen Peddicord
Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter
