Is this a ‘Soft life’

[Wellthatwasabrupt]

And would you want it?

Has Dh, one young Dc and dogs, lives overseas by the beach and countryside, nice house with pool and sea views.
Works 6 hours per week from home. Does all drop offs and pick ups, food shop, dinners, majority to do with Dc and sorting bills. Has a cleaner.
Dh works Mon-Fri -finishes 4.30, no one works weekends.
Days are free based around Dc school drops, coffee with friends, Pilates, yoga, studying or reading if you like, watching Netflix all day if you like, shopping, beach, pool, garden

Would you call this a soft life? Would you like it, be honest?

You work a few hours, you study, you read, you look after your child and you all get weekends together?
Sounds like you are content to me 😌

I enjoyed the adrenaline and grind of the rat race when I was younger, but since hitting 40, have had to shift priorities, due to hormones and circumstances (looking after aging parent who passed away). 😔
If your life gives you contentment and purpose, then you have smashed it 💪
@Wellthatwasabrupt

My job is my social life, its where I see friends etc. I run pubs so without that I would be lonely and bored. Its a hell of a leap from spending all day interacting with people to it just being me. My sister (and best friend) will work longer than me as she is younger than I am, my kids have their own lives and my friends are all at a similar age to me (mid 50's) and the "moving away for retirement" thing is starting to happen amongst the more monied ones.

I do have other friends but thanks to being a carer for my parents (which is likely to get more demanding over the next ten years), they have drifted as I am simply not available between my parents and work and my kids. Sadly, my parents needs mean that adventures are not something I can do. My youngest is 15 and my parents are in their mid/late 70's, so I am pulled all ways.

Where can we sign up?

I definitely wouldn't get bored (I don't work now and I'm never bored). I'd also like to never have to clean a house again.

I dunno, I love my job. I work in care (I know some people massively look down on carers) and I love being able to make a difference in a way I feel is meaningful. I'd like to go part time buy equally wouldn't rely on a partner financially.

I tried it for a year.

Bored to tears. I enjoy working.

When I was younger I would've said this life sounded like the dream, however now I'm older I've realised I need to be striving for building something bigger than me that I really care about, otherwise I go a little mad. So this life would probably drive me mad, but some would undoubtedly like it - and even more will think they would

For a while, yes. Not forever, I would feel aimless and get bored.
However nothing does last forever and even those who seem to have.a charmed life will face difficulties of some sort or another.

At least she is keeping her hand in with six hours a week work.

I work from home.. I just don’t like sitting around drinking coffee… you can’t sell it to me. I lived on the beach with my kids. I actually one day did a mood board with my dream life and went and did it for a year in a tropical island and it wasn’t my dream life after all. It was fun for a year though. Husband also decided he hated beaches after a month too 😂which was a bit annoying since we move half way round to world to basically live on a beach.

I’ve been retired from my career a year now and my life is similar in some ways. I work freelance 9 hours a week and I have a couple of pets and a child in secondary school and I play a lot of tennis and hang out with my friends. I don’t do much housework with cleaners still coming every week. Yes it’s a soft life but my career was 27 years of public service in London. It was tough - long hours and a lot of problem solving for not a huge amount of money. I would say that having time off following an intense week of work is sweeter than being “ off” all the time. Watching something on Netflix is more enjoyable when you’ve been grinding at some task. I’ve gone from seeing a pretty large amount of people and a commute to probably only seeing a tenth of the number of people. Yes everyone is very nice but there’s only so much nice that a person needs. Everyone becomes a bit ….. insipid if there’s no friction.

when I go for coffee we don't chitter chatter, we share what's going on in our lives, I offer emotional support and give my friends the space to be honest about their lives. and vice versa obv. That isn't meaningless. human connection, being there so someone can be heard and seen isn't pointless.

I have never understood why people look down on professional carers, its not a job I could do! I wonder if its because its so low paid and to some people low pay=unimportant. I have so much respect for people who can do it. The pub is near a school/supported living place for young people with quite severe additional needs and they come to us often. They can be very very challenging and my admiration for the carers is very high!

I care for my parents but currently its quite low level and I wont deny that I am dreading when it gets worse (as it is starting to do).

Thank you for what you do x

You sound like ,you want to love the life you have . But if you do, why are you trying to justify it ?why are you looking for strangers to tell you how wonderful it is ? And disagreeing when they don’t agree? .

but if you quit tomorrow, do you not think you'd still those friends without them having to come to your pub to see you? I don't think anyone is suggestion isolation, just that there should be life outside of work. Obv you have huge and unrelenting caring duties, so I get there isn't much time left but in ops scenario, if you could afford to not work, once you fulfilled your caring responsibilities to your parents and kids, is there really nothing you'd want to do in that time?

I do this in other ways. Just not over coffee. I find ‘let’s go for coffee’ is a little bit middle class housewifey. Not saying I don’t drink coffee, I am more of a grab and go coffee drinker. Cocktails might be preferable for this kind of heart to heart.

Swap the countryside house for a city pad and it would be very, very nice.

It's an extremely soft life. I'd probably add writing a novel or studying a course online, or maybe some kind of working with people for a couple of days a week.

Look, you have a lovely life that suits you, I am genuinely happy for you. But it wouldnt suit me, is that really so hard to understand?!

Sounds very much a "consumer lifestyle". I'd want to be doing something more creative with my time, or at least some of it.

Who said you had a ‘soft life’ and why does it upset you?

No - sounds hideous tbh. Particularly the 6 hours of work - what’s the point?

Maybe I'm missing something, but i don't understand the AIBU question.

You ask "is this a soft life" - why are you asking Mumsnet? Surely the important question is are you happy living that life, or not?

Which is it?

Not sure what the point of this post is. Is it your life? Has someone told you it’s ‘soft’ if you are both happy then it’s your life so it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.

Sounds like this person is the OP.

OP asks in the OP "And would you want it?" and "Would you like it, be honest?". Sounds like someone seeking validation that she is living an envious life.

Then when posters criticise that life, she gets defensive and offers a lot of details of how this person's life is not meaningless etc.. How does she know so much when this person living overseas. Why does she care so much that others disagree with the charmed life?

What about volunteering? If I weren't working full time, I would devote more hours to volunteering than I currently am able to commit to.

I'm a university lecturer, and I would dearly love to leave my position at the university due to all the academic politics, administrative tasks, and relentless bureaucracy. However, if I ever had the option of quitting, I would still work on my research as seriously as I do now, not in an occasional, dilettantish "if I feel like it" sort of way. I'm also a fiction writer, which is unrelated to my job, and I'd continue to write as well. I can't imagine giving up either kind of work, and I'd love to have more time to devote to both.

I really wouldn't be interested in a life that consisted of having coffee with friends, doing yoga, watching Netflix, etc. without having something beyond that which I was deeply engaged in. I mean, I do the coffee, yoga, Netflix, etc. anyway. I just wouldn't want to have days and days of doing those things without also being involved in meaningful work.

It does sound lovely and I’d love a summer of having that life! But for me, it’s more important to teach my children about affording their own life so that they are always secure, rather than being able to do every pick up.

Also housework/ child care is important and contributing…..my partner and I just have to do it on top of working full time.