London-centric prejudices. can you have a career and a rural life?

[hatwoman]

I've taken 2 big decisions in the last few months. I resigned to do free-lance consultancy work. and we;re house-hunting oop north in the peak district (conveniently sandwiched between Manchester and Sheffied, 2 hours on the train to St Pancras). I grew up in a village in the peak district - stuffed with successful business-people, doctors, university lecturers, teachers, writers. Why, just because I want to wake up in the morning to a nice view, see my family more than 4 times a year, and have a garden bigger than a postage stamp, does everyone think I'm giving up my fecking career to keep chickens? I sometimes wonder if they've heard of Sheffield, Manchester, trains and the world wide web.

I expect they're envious hatwoman - and therefore in denial that your career will proceed exactly as before
at Peaks and I write as a fairly contented Londoner born and bred
Spent a lot of time in Derbyshire when I was a student in Sheffield

I'm MD of an IT company. I haven't been to London for months although DH goes in about once a week, everything else is Skype, conference calls, etc. We manage a lot of staff and a lot of international clients from our rural part of Sussex. Where we have lots of acres and chickens . I also see my kids all the time.

We moved here 8 years ago and most people are of the opinion that it's only possible for us to do this because we're techies and I'm the boss. It shouldn't be like that, rural communities need people who are around a lot and cities are bursting at the seams. Unfortunately most employers still want to see people sitting at desks from 9 to 5 (and longer) because they don't trust them to work from home.

You can safely ignore London. If they find out how good it is out here they will all follow you!

Message withdrawn

I live in an idyllic little town and we're surrounded by mountains and scenery and fresh air, outdoor activities on tap and acres of countryside to explore. I do have a job I love but it limits me to non-specialised work. If I wanted to train further, progress academically or focus more on a certain aspect of my career I would have to move. So there's definitely a fairly hefty degree of compromise.