If you could live a whole other life, what would it be?

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Completely out of the blue, I just had a whole picture of myself living a completely different life. I was in America, somewhere with lots of horses and pines and the matriarch of a large family with a well-respected, pillar of the community husband and a brood of beautiful, healthy children. Not a clue where this came from and a million miles away from my actual life and what I've ever wanted.

It got me wondering, what other lives might I have lived? Have you ever daydreamed about living a completely different life and what was it?

I'd live in Languedoc in Southern France and make delicious wines, to ge eaten with delicious cheeses.

It’s so so shallow , but I’d love to be really beautiful. I know people say it’s a curse , but I wouldn’t mind trying it for one day. Don’t care if it’s male or female beautiful. Maybe model looks , that chiseled thin look . 👀

in my alternative life I would have had parents who supported me going to uni, I’d have had an amazing teaching career and not sacrificed 30 years of my like to fostering and ending up at 60 burnt out and broke

I'd be a Boho hippy with ankle length skirts. I'd travel the world with nothing but a tiny back pack, making friends everywhere I went because of my half mystical wisdom and magnetism. I'd glide around like a fey forest fairy with my mind elsewhere and everyone would find it endearing. I'd have a voice like Dolly Parton so I'd sing for a living. I'd be very beautiful also.

To be a well loved family pet. A cat or dog. A hamster or something might be loved but I'd imagine it's shitting itself with fear and desperately trying to escape 90% of the time! So not a small prey animal.

I do want to ‘come back’ one day rich and beautiful.
I know that I won’t of course .!
Be nice to experience it.

I would be a professional musician, playing in a band that does some touring but not on the road all the time. I would have had a good career and made some money and would live on my own in a mansion block flat on a quiet street in Fitzrovia.

I would want to be a single school librarian and live in a beautiful tenament flat in Edinburgh. I'd be Wiccan and have lots of wonderful witchy women as friends.

Or alternatively live very rurally on a smallholding near the sea growing vegetables and rearing goats with three children and a husband that worked away on oil rigs but occasionally popped home 🤣.

I actually love my life with DH and DDs but do occasionally dream of an alternate reality.

I'd be a successful painter living in the south of France, but I'd actually be from there, and I'd eat with family and friends most nights. I'd have a pool and a man who worships me and is handy

A singer or actor is my other choice if the rich and beautiful one eludes me. Maybe guitar in a soft rock band that is very successful and gets asked to do Glastonbury. I’d be a bit of an icon , but also nice and pleasant and give lots of money to charity.

I'd have a gorgeous contralto voice and be an opera diva, travelling the world in luxury and being feted for my talent and beauty. My dressing room would be knee-deep in gardenias after every performance and admirers would shower me with rubies and pearls and take me out for champagne before squiring me back to my suite at the Savoy where I would dismiss them with a haughty wave.

I am just beginning to live my dream life. Forgetting all the shit and ongoing grief of losing a child I have retired (2 years ago) bought a little flat by the sea and spend half my time in my real life and half my time by the sea (often on my own and often with my wonderful dp and dogs). I feel I can re-set down there. I get the peace I crave and when I’m down by the coast I’m not the bereaved mother, I’m just me.

Oh i love this i was in Greece 3 years ago and we were waiting for the guy to turn up to take us on the boat trip and he had a desk on the beach where he sold the boat trips, just a tiny desk and chair and i sat at the desk and someone came up and wanted a boat trip and i thought yes i want this job at the desk on the beach by the water

This made me laugh so much...maybe you should be a comedy writer in your next life

I'd live next door to Piers Morgan and play really loud music all the time.

Seriously, I don't know...

I'd be Stevie Nicks in the 1970s but without the drugs!

Ooh, an academic (maybe history) who made enough money doing research/writing and occasionally seeing colleagues and teaching nice easy students. I'd live with a cat in a beautifully decorated little house in somewhere like central York, Oxford or Cambridge. I'd cycle everywhere and have lots of local friends and go out for dinners/theatres/brunch every week!

Rich, living somewhere hot in Italy. Volunteering within the community and enjoying life without work! Leaving in a house with enough land to have a large garden, grow my veg (already do), get some chickens. Loads of dogs and cats.

I’m jealous of people who can think this way. I have some sort of deficit of imagination where when HR people do that conflict resolution thing where they ask, ‘if you could wave a magic wand and make things as you want them, what would that look like?’ I just can’t unhook myself from reality, or see the point of doing that.

Like, if I could wave a literal magic wand I’d probably do away with hunger and inequality and climate change and illness and mortality and suffering and war and maybe straighten my teeth and make it so I was able to fly. Can’t see how that helps me think outside the box about my work conflict with Gareth from accounts 🤷‍♀️

I’d be interested to see what my life would have been like if I’d been born male. I’d like to be able to compare male and female versions of my life side by side, if all other variables were the same. Like, how would the family dynamic have been different if I were the oldest son? If I were an older brother, not an older sister? I have my theories about how that would change a variety of things but I’d love to see it play out sliding-doors style.

In other words, Mary Beard! my choice too! 😂

Different parents, no siblings, different friends throughout, different partner. My life could have been so different if I only changed my closest relationships.

Farmer’s wife. Or something countryside profession related.
Or driving round doing lovely gardens in an old Land Rover like Rosemary and Thyme but without the murders.

I would not have listened to my mum and done the English degree with a post-grad in creative writing. Or History of Art. I would look for work in a museum, art gallery or school. I would not have hurried into getting into a serious relationship and all the fallout, but waited until I was much older to make sure I found the right person. I would have built a much bigger social circle too. I would travel more too. I'm at sn age now where I look back over my adult life and can call myself a silly goose for some of the decisions I've made.

I remember an evening in Juan Les Pins watching a group of older women meeting up, wearing floaty kaftans and jewelled sandals, and sharing a bottle or 2 of rose at a table on the beach and really wanting that for my later years. So a little beach front place in Antibes, with cats and lots of lovely art and a small pool, maybe with a housekeeper. But also a pied a terre in London or Paris for shopping and exhibitions. Joan Collins stylee.