It's nearing the first anniversary of my blog and I have now had over a year of not working. I am taking some time to reflect. I'm never quite sure if it's a good idea, as I do have a tendency to overthink things, but I can't stop myself perusing my life when I'm home alone most of the time. Jet's lovely and all, but not a great conversationalist!
Overall, I am still very contented with my new way of life and I'm sure this is the way I want to be living. I enjoy the creativity, the home building, the simplicity and the mindful approach to life.
The one area where I am less confident, is that I still feel my life controls me rather than me being in control of where I want to be and what I want to do. For many years now, I have had a vision of the type of life I want to embrace in this next stage of my life. There have been lots of reasons along the way that have prevented me from just 'going for it' - mum, husband's job, my job, children's education, finances... You know, exactly the things that keep many people tied to a life not quite as they'd like it to be.
Some of those responsibilities have now gone - my job, mum. The children are starting to leave home and by the end of this academic year, only one will be left at home (poor soul!). Thanks to my father's frugality and my mother's willingness to take the odd risk financially, the financial situation will be the best it's ever going to be for us in the next few months. Thanks to our own sensible planning, we have no debt and are in a position to embrace a change of lifestyle.
And yet, I still feel fear that it will never happen; that I'll be forever on the inside, looking out at the life I'd like to have. I think that losing mum has had a huge impact. I feel derailed, lost, disconnected.
It's rare in life that circumstances coincide to make things possible, but in my mind, losing mum, the change in our family situation and the enhanced finances should all lead to the opportunity to move forward. I need to get back on my wagon so to speak. This is surely the time?!
What circumstances encouraged/forced you to change your lives and how did you convince yourselves to be brave enough to take the leap?
You do well to think things through, but as you say be careful not to overthink and become bogged down.
ReplyDeleteThe circumstances that forced us to jump into our change of lifestyle, was simply a conversation between us about our plans for retirement, and then a lightbulb moment that made us both realise that once retired we would possibly be not as fit and most definitely not as young as we were then, and why didn't we just go for it while we were more physically able to do so. The next day we placed an advert in the Farmers Guardian looking for a farm to rent and here we are, after five years of renting in a place of our own and actually doing it.
We've found it's the thinking about things for too long that can stop them from happening, you come up with reasons why NOT to do stuff, you think of all the things that MIGHT go wrong, whereas if you just do it you come across all these problems in the course of actually doing it and simply deal with them as and when they happen and they usually turn out no to be the huge obstacles you might have thought they were going to be.
We do most things after a simple conversation about them, heck we even got married and planned a wedding during a ninety minute car journey!!
Love this advice :)
DeleteThank you so much Sue for taking the time to write such a full and sage comment. I really appreciate that you have cared enough to reply to my conundrum. Mr D and I are going off to Mums at the weekend to do a final clear out, so we'll perhaps have time on the car journey to talk through how we each envisage this next stage working out. I'll keep you all posted!
DeleteI'm still waiting but what I'm waiting for I don't really know! Maybe it's just an age thing. Perhaps life is never quite right.
ReplyDeleteI know what I want .... Or at least, I think I do! I think you're right, there is often an element of doubt and wanting something else. Crazy really - we only get one go at this!
DeleteI have had a chance to think a lot over the past year since I left my NHS job. To be honest it's taken me a year to adjust to our new way of life. I can't imagine any other now. I don't want much - am trying to simplify everything, even eventually hoping to downsize (our present house is quite small anyway but has a large garden which will be too much in our later years). The coastal cottage is in my dreams!
ReplyDeleteIt's good to have a dream especially if it's a shared dream. Let's hope you get there one day and certainly, living a simpler life will help you along the way :)
DeleteTheirs is a difference between force of circumstances and having to make the best of a situation and making deliberate choices because your circumstances allow you. I would say that any major life transition, however much desired or aspired to, is likely to cause a degree of uneasiness simply because it is a major life transition. For our part here are the criteria we used to decide to retire early from professional careers:-
ReplyDelete1. No debts
2. A retirement income (the big decision here was to access a reduced occupational pension early)
3. Some savings to fall back on
4. Children no longer financially dependent on us (one of the three is virtually there now)
5. Knowing how we would use our time (Crucial. This also includes having plans for the future, however modest in scale. Research indicates that the latter is one of the key determinants for 'happiness' rather than material position).
More than one year on any initial uneasiness has dissipated.
Your 'My Vision' post some time back is a fairly accurate summary of where we are at.
DeleteI think we are there with one to three, but four is still an issue and five is the real hurdle - we need to negotiate what we each want out of this and it's not necessarily the same thing! I think my vision is exactly that - MINE. We need to work out a happy medium so Mr D will be happy too. Thanks for the advice. It's good to have feedback from people who have done it and not regretted it :)
DeleteGreat advice in lots of these comments. I know time off will be a novelty for me initially in retirement but I don't want to vegetate. So next year I want to learn new skills, patchwork, crocheting.
ReplyDeleteThat's one of the best bits of not working full time - the 'space' to learn new things :)
DeleteFor us goals in each area of life - health, family, travel, crafts, home, food.
ReplyDeleteGoals with small incremental steps to get us where we want to go. In theory we would always want to be busy. But busy doing things WE want to do. Busy chopping wood, harvesting vegetables, reading books, cooking steak, planting flowers, sewing etc.
With a week full of plans towards the goals we want to achieve. Days scheduled in to rest, and no deadlines so our schedules can be stopped and restarted whenever. Plans to travel, being able to make the most of sunny days away regardless of what day of the week it falls on.
As a stay at home mum I feel lucky that we only have to consider my husbands work.
MrsEscape
Hi! Thanks for dropping by and commenting. I've visited your blog - some interesting posts there! It's funny that you mention separating your life plan into those areas. I have written a whole load of questions along very similar lines for Mr D and myself to discuss on our weekend away this weekend, so we can draw up a joint plan to work towards. It's time we worked towards the life we want now, just as you are doing :)
DeleteLet us know how the chat goes ad what your goals are! may give us some food for thought too :-) x
ReplyDelete