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I love my mother. I really do, but sometimes she has a habit of saying things or dropping conversations on me that make me start looking at things in an entirely different light and then before I know it my life is upside down.
So, she came over on Tuesday to help me clean the kitchen at the old place. And we got to talking - and I made a running joke for me that Doug has inconvenient timing about when he showed up in my life - which is a fairly standard line for me. Most people know that when I broke it off with my ex, I wanted to be single for a while. Play the field. Get my bedpost notched good and proper and have some fun and maybe get my heart broken a little and be a tad bit crazy.
Generally, be young and single and enjoy myself without getting tied down.
So naturally, because this is me and the universe looks at my plans for my life and laughs and then sets about doing exactly the opposite, that didn't happen - what did happen is I walked face first (well, actually it was an incident with fencing, but you know what I mean) into the love of my life, the man I'm going to marry, etc.
And don't get me wrong, if I was sent back and had to do it all again, I would make exactly the same choices. A hundred times over. A thousand - a million. Wouldn't change it for the world.
But it does mean, as a result, that that item was crossed off my list of stuff I got to do with my life. I didn't get to be young and single and crazy.
Which you know, I don't mind - I mean look at the pay off, I have come out with the better side of the bargain so hard there actually isn't any competition.
But my mother's response was this: Well, don't let it happen with anything else.
My oh-so-considered, elucide and verbose response to this was : Za?
Ye-ah. Life changing conversations and I aren't on good speaking terms.
And then, it all came spilling out: that she has regrets about her life. Well, not regrets, regrets. She doesn't know if she'd change anything. But she does wish she hadn't given up her career in academia so fast to follow my Dad around the country. Because you see, he was moving around with his job, but her job wouldn't let her do so, so she jacked it in, went into teaching, and married and had a family.
And looking back, she still might have done all of that...but she'd have waited a couple of years. Not given up her career so fast. Had her first child (me) at 30, or 32, rather than 28. Bitten the bullet, and lived apart from my Dad for a little bit if that's what both their jobs needed rather than giving hers up so fast.
And I sat there and thought...bugger, she has a point.
Because...well, looking at my life, I really haven't done much. My relationship with Doug aside, I'm not exactly notable in terms of what I've done and what I've achieved. When I was still a kid, prior to me moving out, I was still racking up the wow-that's-something-to-remember points. I've dived with sharks, I've trekked the Amazon, I've climbed the great wall of China (to anyone who hasn't been: yes, climb is the correct term, some parts of that damned thing are near vertical) and then the second I stepped out of my parent's shadow and went my own way in the world...I hit mediocrity and hit it hard.
I mean, what have I done really? I met the person I truely believe is my other half. But that's about where the positive stops. I flailed my way through university, changing course and scraping through with a pass having utterly failed to pass a particular module despite taking the damn thing twice. I, through blind luck for the most part and after nearly three years of working dead end, demoralising jobs, ended up in a position for which I have no credentials, and no great affinity - I am good at it, get paid a fair wage and it's a nice place to work and things could certainly be worse, but it's not something I can really take pride in and it doesn't have me leaping out of bed in the morning. I wanted to be an author, but having written one book that was both bad and unsellable, I've gotten halfway into a second and now spend my evenings playing computer games in between coming up with excuses for why I've done no writing. I'm knee deep in debt, having made no progress in getting out of it from where I was a year ago, and that's unlikely to change while I'm living and working where I currently am. Oh, I do have another positive: I've made some friends I honestly wouldn't trade the world for.
But that's it.
I mean, Doug and I have joked about how we'll tell our kids about how we used to slay dragons, but the second we step into the real world, what would I have to tell them? I used to be an adventurer, but got boring? I - the die-hard feminist - pretty much walked out of university and into domestic life because nothing else landed on my door step? How goddamned cruddy am I?
And something Mum said was it's easy to fall in with what life brings. But a lot of the time if you want something specific out of it, you have to pick it up and shake it until it gives it to you.
Well, life has a tendancy to bite. So maybe I won't shake it. But I'll be damned if I won't kick it a little.
Some people have a bucket list. I have decided - and thankfully, Doug is onboard with this - that I will have a stuff-I-want-to-be-able-to-tell-my-kids-I've-done. Which means I have to do them either before I have kids, or while they're very young.
And some of them are definitely before we have them - because doing this stuff with a child in tow just is not a good idea.
SO, I have set myself a week to come up with 50 things, big or small, I want to do. And then I'm going to work out what is actually possible. And then, I'm going to do it. Somehow, someway.
Because, fucking hell, I refuse to be boring and just let everything...slip past.
Dear friends, a warning: some of these may involve dragging you along. I'll try to remember to ask for volunteers first.
So, she came over on Tuesday to help me clean the kitchen at the old place. And we got to talking - and I made a running joke for me that Doug has inconvenient timing about when he showed up in my life - which is a fairly standard line for me. Most people know that when I broke it off with my ex, I wanted to be single for a while. Play the field. Get my bedpost notched good and proper and have some fun and maybe get my heart broken a little and be a tad bit crazy.
Generally, be young and single and enjoy myself without getting tied down.
So naturally, because this is me and the universe looks at my plans for my life and laughs and then sets about doing exactly the opposite, that didn't happen - what did happen is I walked face first (well, actually it was an incident with fencing, but you know what I mean) into the love of my life, the man I'm going to marry, etc.
And don't get me wrong, if I was sent back and had to do it all again, I would make exactly the same choices. A hundred times over. A thousand - a million. Wouldn't change it for the world.
But it does mean, as a result, that that item was crossed off my list of stuff I got to do with my life. I didn't get to be young and single and crazy.
Which you know, I don't mind - I mean look at the pay off, I have come out with the better side of the bargain so hard there actually isn't any competition.
But my mother's response was this: Well, don't let it happen with anything else.
My oh-so-considered, elucide and verbose response to this was : Za?
Ye-ah. Life changing conversations and I aren't on good speaking terms.
And then, it all came spilling out: that she has regrets about her life. Well, not regrets, regrets. She doesn't know if she'd change anything. But she does wish she hadn't given up her career in academia so fast to follow my Dad around the country. Because you see, he was moving around with his job, but her job wouldn't let her do so, so she jacked it in, went into teaching, and married and had a family.
And looking back, she still might have done all of that...but she'd have waited a couple of years. Not given up her career so fast. Had her first child (me) at 30, or 32, rather than 28. Bitten the bullet, and lived apart from my Dad for a little bit if that's what both their jobs needed rather than giving hers up so fast.
And I sat there and thought...bugger, she has a point.
Because...well, looking at my life, I really haven't done much. My relationship with Doug aside, I'm not exactly notable in terms of what I've done and what I've achieved. When I was still a kid, prior to me moving out, I was still racking up the wow-that's-something-to-remember points. I've dived with sharks, I've trekked the Amazon, I've climbed the great wall of China (to anyone who hasn't been: yes, climb is the correct term, some parts of that damned thing are near vertical) and then the second I stepped out of my parent's shadow and went my own way in the world...I hit mediocrity and hit it hard.
I mean, what have I done really? I met the person I truely believe is my other half. But that's about where the positive stops. I flailed my way through university, changing course and scraping through with a pass having utterly failed to pass a particular module despite taking the damn thing twice. I, through blind luck for the most part and after nearly three years of working dead end, demoralising jobs, ended up in a position for which I have no credentials, and no great affinity - I am good at it, get paid a fair wage and it's a nice place to work and things could certainly be worse, but it's not something I can really take pride in and it doesn't have me leaping out of bed in the morning. I wanted to be an author, but having written one book that was both bad and unsellable, I've gotten halfway into a second and now spend my evenings playing computer games in between coming up with excuses for why I've done no writing. I'm knee deep in debt, having made no progress in getting out of it from where I was a year ago, and that's unlikely to change while I'm living and working where I currently am. Oh, I do have another positive: I've made some friends I honestly wouldn't trade the world for.
But that's it.
I mean, Doug and I have joked about how we'll tell our kids about how we used to slay dragons, but the second we step into the real world, what would I have to tell them? I used to be an adventurer, but got boring? I - the die-hard feminist - pretty much walked out of university and into domestic life because nothing else landed on my door step? How goddamned cruddy am I?
And something Mum said was it's easy to fall in with what life brings. But a lot of the time if you want something specific out of it, you have to pick it up and shake it until it gives it to you.
Well, life has a tendancy to bite. So maybe I won't shake it. But I'll be damned if I won't kick it a little.
Some people have a bucket list. I have decided - and thankfully, Doug is onboard with this - that I will have a stuff-I-want-to-be-able-to-tell-my-kids-I've-done. Which means I have to do them either before I have kids, or while they're very young.
And some of them are definitely before we have them - because doing this stuff with a child in tow just is not a good idea.
SO, I have set myself a week to come up with 50 things, big or small, I want to do. And then I'm going to work out what is actually possible. And then, I'm going to do it. Somehow, someway.
Because, fucking hell, I refuse to be boring and just let everything...slip past.
Dear friends, a warning: some of these may involve dragging you along. I'll try to remember to ask for volunteers first.
