This is my life goal but my friend says it's boring.

[WindyWendyHouse]

I know we are all different and all have different ambitions and goals in life but I just wondered what others thought. Is my friend right, am I boring?

For context, my life has been quite stressful for the last few years. I am 52 and have raised my dc for the last 20 years. I have some chronic health issues so have only worked part time for a long time and have always had a job, not a career but I have made my peace with that and that's fine. Tbh, my priority has been to get my health back on track and feeling well.

I currently help to care for my mum who has Alzheimers and have been doing this for the last 5 years. For 6 years my ds (now 19) had school anxiety every day and that in itself was very emotional, he is doing well now thankfully. This has all been draining - emotionally and physically.

I have ADHD (and probably ASD too) and I have always loved peace and quiet. The lovely village I grew up and still live in has been heavily built on in recent years and is now very busy, I live on the main road of the village and it is so noisy now. I don not enjoy living here now.

I have always craved peace and quiet. I love nature and the countryside. My ideal day would be a walk in the countryside with my dh and dog, a mooch around a nice garden centre and enjoy a lovely lunch in the cafe there and an afternoon in my country garden (when I eventually move to the countryside) with a good book and then a nice film in the evening.

My dh and I plan on moving deeper into the countryside or maybe a small market /seaside town to spend the rest of out days there. We like to travel but atm are happy in our touring caravan exploring the UK, we do plan to take it over to Europe when dh retires.

However, my best friend of 45 years thinks this is boring. She is lovely and I love her dearly but we are very different. I appreciate we are all different but she seems to think my life goals are dull. She has a lot of money and travels alot. She is very sociable and is either at a party, down the pub or out for a meal every weekend. She loves hot sunny holidays where she will sunbathe all day and then socialise all evening. She and her dh are always off to concerts and places full of people. I totally understand that is her thing but as someone who is neurodiverse that is my idea of hell, I just crave peace and I wish she could see that. I truly love that she enjoys her lifestyle but I love mine too, she is always on at me to book a holiday abroad but I (or DH) don't want to sit on a beach all day. When we do eventually have the money to travel abroad we want to go to interesting places, I want to go to places with history and culture but she finds that boring.

We are all who we are and I accept that she enjoys a fun packed life but that just isn't me. Am I really that boring?

Laying in the sun, drinking and not going to explore local culture sounds to me like she is the boring one.

you do you OP, your life goals sound fab to me.

@pollymere we moved to Bath and definitely go to ‘more’ things than when we lived in London- I do like London and we still go a lot with work , but I actually found going out in London to be a bit of a fag- as we didn’t live really central ( couldn’t afford to) and hence it meant public transport often for at least 30 mins each way plus up and down tube stations at night or slightly sketchy bus trips - whereas now I’ve got a 6 minute bus into town ( very regular ) or a £7 cab . I can meet friends on 20 minutes notice etc and yep we’ve got the full range of entertainment. I accept it’s not the country ‘ as in rural- but I have that too within 5 minutes of house. So yep you can still have a pretty full on life if you want it outside London too, just need to choose where carefully and pay up accordingly.

Life in the country side is not quiet let me tell thee.. currently we have tractors up and down the road throwing god knows what in the road. It stinks.
Can't get parked anywhere due to tourists. Dogs yapping. Cows bellowing and now some kid screaming. Life's not always greener

Your ideal sounds fab!! my OH literally says all of this every day! he wants to move to the country, away from people where he can have more space and more dogs to walk in the woods, dirt bikes and quiet from the chaos of a city. I would also love that but our kids are just starting secondary school and i feel they benefit from being around people, especially his daughter, her social skills are quite poor. Maybe one day. But don't worry about what your friend thinks...you have to do what makes you happy!!

Today -

dog walk - tick
lunch in cafe - tick
walk along coast - tick
reading - to do this evening
(Also just drunk a mug of cocoa)

Age - mid 50s

I had a day off work today.

It went like this-

Got up at 8am and showered/washed hair.
8.30am- walked dogs.
9.15am- used the sourdough starter I’d fed yesterday to make 2 x lots of dough.
10am- coffee on the sunny patio while reading a book and eating breakfast (that I had time to prepare last night- chia pudding and fruit).
11am to c. 3pm- gardened. Got so much done! Built a sweetpea teepee, sowed a chaos flower area, separated and potted up dahlia bulbs, planted alliums, tended to cosmos, sunflower, zinnia, and sweetpea seedlings. Repotted a monstera. Planted a lot of bedding plants into patio pots. Loads of general clearing and tidying in the garden.
In between plant runs, I was in and out of the kitchen stretching and shaping my dough- one for a sourdough loaf, one for a focaccia.
While gardening, I listened to my book on audible, and also a podcast.
While I was outside, I had the robot hoover running inside, and the dishwasher going.
3pm- lunch and more coffee.
4pm- back to the garden.
5pm- husband got home from work and we had coffee and a chat on the patio. I prepped dinner (the focaccia topped with passata, nduja, scarmoza, pesto) served with some cured meats and salad.
We went for a walk with the dogs, showed husband all my gardening work.
7pm- dinner and wine.
8pm- Netflix and wine and biscuits.

It was such a lovely day! Really did me the world of good. I’m hoping to go down to a 9-day fortnight at work in the next few month and the idea of spending every second Friday like this really appeals.

I’m feeling really stiff and happy now. Moved my body loads today and ate well so feel it did my body and mind a lot of good.

We have just out down a deposit on a Motorhome. There will be many country walks, beach walks, looking round cathedrals and stately homes and cream teas to be had. I’m sure she would find that boring but I couldn’t give a shiny shite and neither should you.

That's kinda what we did, purchased a camper van and spent so much time in Lincolnshire we sold the van and moved there! - now I'm living my perfect life 😀

Honestly OP I’m quite a bit younger than you but I totally understand. If you’ve had caring responsibilities I think peace and time to regroup is essential. It is unbelievably exhausting both with the physical running about but also emotionally - it’s brutal.

I would reframe it to your friend that not being out in nature, gardening etc would be wasting your life as that’s what you enjoy in life. You sound like you’ve tried lots of things but you know where you want to be - a lot of people don’t have that. You have great self awareness and know what makes you happy.

Who cares what she thinks?

@Ilikewinter I visited Lincoln cathedral a few weeks ago but if you like cathedrals and haven’t been to Norwich I recommend that. It’s a little scary spending that much money on a Motorhome but they keep their value quite well and it will be great travelling about. Going to do a 2 week and 3 week trip by end of July and then away all of September and some of October. Then Spain in January for around 10 weeks.