Looking back

I always wanted to be a social worker . I just know I would have been a good one . Sadly it was never to be which really saddens me. Pregnant at 18, a single mum, three times married and worked full time in jobs I’ve hated just to make ends meet. Definitely not what I had planned .

What a really great question wotnot. Much food for thought. I think I started with a pretty serious dose of the youthful idealism of the 1960s. Peace on earth and change the world blah blah. I spent decades working in the health and welfare sector trying to do things that "made a difference". I wonder.

Fifty years on I feel incredibly sad and disappointed by the appalling lack of progress in the world, mankind's inhumanity, our capacity to kill, injure and degrade so many of our fellow human beings, the environment and our fellow creatures on this earth. It is sometimes said that cynics are disappointed idealists and I probably fall into that category.

At a personal level I've achieved some of what I had hoped for but not everything. I do feel incredibly grateful every single day for the lovely life I have in a beautiful, safe country and for my family and friends and the beauty of the natural world. There is much joy in my life and that is a pretty good way to feel.

In many ways I think I'm still coming to terms with my life somehow being a much smaller life than I expected but I know that reality is true for the vast majority of us. I look back and think my idealistic young self must have had have some very big dreams.

As an afterthought I am enormously impressed and heartened by the young Americans who are taking such incredibly brave actions following the tragic shooting at their High School in Florida. All power to them from across the oceans. The world stands with them.

I never did have a plan, like most people I have had my ups and downs and my share of tragedy, but I’m still standing and content with my life now. I love retirement, have turned my jewellery making hobby into a small business, finally had my first grandchild 6 weeks ago, and apart from a broken metatarsal and badly sprained ankle that is still not back to normal after 4 months, my health is good.

My Grandma always said count your blessings not your misfortunes and I think she was right.

Home Farm sounds like my life but 36yrs wed. Had no desire to get married but did. No desire to have kids, but did. Was happy in my career but had to stop down to run house, kids etc. Now with a mean man who I realise I don't love and font even like very much. Still have ds at home and not enough money to escape. But I try and make the most of everyday ad my mother died young and I feel I must value what life I do have

I have sort of drifted along with life. Made a few short terms plans that never seem to pan out as I would have liked.
Married three times (third time lucky) I have two wonderful daughters (my greatest achievement) and I am a gran in waiting, not sure if I will ever be a real one.
Always fancied living abroad but that has never happened.
Now 62 this year and still working really hard but wish I was richer and could have a comfy retirement (not going to happen)
Lost one of my sisters to cancer last year she was only 67 so I am grateful that apart from painful Arthritis I am healthy and still alive and kicking.
Maybe this is the week for my lottery win.
?

My main goals as a child/ young person, were to be a nurse and live in England. I achieved both of those, but there was so much heartache along the way which I could have done without. I am on my own now, but have happy, healthy children and grandchildren and nothing else matters to me. (I also get to travel a lot which was a dream when I was young.)

Simple answer NO. I ended up married [50 years August] so that put paid to everything, and it's all still going wrong.

wotnot You have caused me to pause in my life! Not one bit has my life gone how I would have wanted. My dreams were similar to radicalnan's but I married young, 19, while a student and he was 14 years older. Very soon he changed. We did not know what Narcissism was then and he successfully cut me off from friends and family. Life was nothing like the life I had imagined.
I can't talk about it now, sorry.

My life has not turned out at all as I had hoped but I try to adapt and I seem to be surviving in spite of myself. No complaints here just silly wishes but they tick me over in the melancholic arena.

This post has me in tears. I was an only child brought up in the 50s in a happy, loving family but quite a lonely childhood all the same. I wanted to get married, have a family, not want for much and be happy. It all happened in the fullness of time. What I didn't bank on was DH's inherited illness which eventually killed him and ended our idyll. Although we are a close family, they are all living their own lives with their own families and here I am again, back to being the only one. Life has gone full circle and even though I want for nothing materially for which I thank my lucky stars, I never envisaged this, but who knows what life has in store for any of us?

Didnt have a life plan, but always wanted to be a Nurse, which I acheived, didnt paricularly want to marry, but met my Husband and subsequently moved to Sweden fifty years ago! Life has been up and down but generally its been good, however I still wish I lived in the UK!

So sorry you feel like that annie, although it's not surprising given your last year; I do hope with time that life will look up for you, and you'll feel happy again.

Like Beejo, I was sold the “get married and live happy ever after” scenario, but also ended up with the bumpy ride. Past generations put up with unhappy marriages to avoid the stigma of divorce in those days. I wish I could turn the clock back, but hindsight’s a wonderful thing and we can only learn and go forward. Life gives us the tests, long before it gives us the lessons ! I have 3 wonderful adult kids, all with lovely partners and 5 amazing grandkids, plus a Mum still alive ... I too am comfortable and have amazing holidays, just returned from the Carnival in Rio for example. The only regret is never finding the right man for me ... but as everything else is so good, can any of us have everything in life ? So my glass is more than half full despite my knight in shining armour ending up a joke in tin foil !!

I read Jo's Boys and wanted to have a Plumfield home of my own full of waifs and strays....have had that and still take them in from time to time.

I would have liked to be Mrs Chips.........but due to the nature of the waifs and strays became more Mrs Fagin.

I have loved and been loved but that can only ever end in sadness, the lovelier it is the deeper the sadness.

BUT, I have been abroad and had amazing kids and dogs of every description and technology and driven cars, read books, been to the opera............lucky me eh?

Nature is my best friend, art and the library, who knew that we would have so much for the taking when we started out so poor, in the slum housing of London after the war.

I think I’ve got out of life what I put into it. That’s regarding those things I could control such as my career as an example.

I’m now approaching that part of my life over which I’ll have very little control - my future health, mobility, etc.. This will be very unpredictable.

I'm not sensible enough to ever have had a lifeplan.
It was all pretty straightforward until I reached my 50's when life suddenly took an unexpected direction and everything changed completely. For the better? In some ways.

Not even one little bit, nothing has turned out as anticipated but much of it has been better. Started married life with nothing, now have a comfortable retirement due to making difficult decisions then going for it and not looking back. Life could have been easier, we have faced more challenges than most and too many health issues but throughout it all we have stuck at it and come through.

Life still throws us curved balls but somehow or other we get through. No one anticipates losing their adult child but one way or another we will start to rebuild our lives and keep on keeping on.

I wanted the romantic happy-ever-after we were sold in those days. Needless to say, that didn't happen and, like most people, life's been extremely up and down. But, considering what life was like when I was born in 1949, I still very much appreciate the comfort of my life now.
I couldn't put into words what I hoped for as a child but I think of it now as 'glamour' compared to the drabness of the world in those days and compared with that, I live a very glamorous life and am overwhelmingly grateful every day. When I was, say, six years old, I couldn't have imagined what a lovely world we would live in now. Sometimes I look around at my warm and comfortable home or, maybe, a when I'm eating in a nice restaurant or when I'm sitting in an aeroplane, flying over the ocean and I just think "wow!". If I could have foreseen the future, I would've thought I was going to be a millionaire, though I'm a very long way from it.
Basically consider myself incredibly blessed.

Hello wotnot. Great question! I can't say that anything has turned out as I planned and sometimes I do feel a little sad about the things I haven't done. But (and it's a big but) I've got a roof over my head, food in the fridge, moderately good health and loving C & GC. I think that's all any of us can realistically hope for and as I get older I'm trying to learn to be content and not so restless for change! Although I hope I still have plenty of living to do.....

I agree with auntieflo completely and of course without the aches and pains

I’ve just turned 60 and still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up......so still think a wonderful new chapter is about to unfold! But I’m happy with my life so far!

I didn't have a life plan. I had hopes , married and hoped for a long happy marriage, had eight years. Hoped for four children, have now buried three. Hoped my old age would be happy but it isn't .

I know it's a cliché to say it's going to be a bumpy ride, by my goodness it certainly gas been up to now and nothing like I'd hoped or dreamed. But I'm glad to be still here, and I count my blessings. I still have plans but not too ambitious!

Any plans I had were minimal and very modest. Mr C isn’t a planner but did have some expectations which have been severely challenged. If we think about our lives as a road trip there have been more than a few traffic jams, many detours, and wonderfully scenic routes to fulfilling destinations. We’re currently in a traffic jam, but know it won’t last, the next scenic route will come.

Welcome wotnot. I had my life planned, from 5years old I was going to be a nurse, from teenage years I added QANC to the nursing. I did not particularly want to marry but if I did I definitely did not want children.
Met my future DH at 17, became a nurse but dropped the plans for the QAs. Got married and promptly had two DC, I never got to travel but DH did and I had to stay at home and hold the fort. So much for planning.