Still not achieved the BIG DREAM ! Have you?

[upandaway]

Life is ticking by and I am still not yet where I want to be.

Have decent Dh,lovely kids,ok home etc but just havent achieved what I had hoped for.
I wanted to be, well, er, I dunno, just somebody I could be proud of.

Everything is just mundane and DULL DULL DULL.

Why aren't I in Africa helping poverty stricken villages, or being self sufficient, or a Professor by now lecturing people on nuclear energy.

I am just a boring old Mum in her thirties who has not achieved anything and I feel crap about it!

Do any of you think the same?

Wow, the orphanage sounds amazing. I do believe that you are not only helping others, but it is fantastic for your children too, to see a bit more of life and how others live. It's something I would like to do when kids are no longer babies. Thanks, littlewonder, for showing that it can be done, that it can be reality fairly easily and not just another 'great idea'. How old are your kids? What did they get out of it? (sorry if hijacking thread)

My daughter is 14 and son is 12. We did stay in a hotel and spent lots of time going off and doing other holdiay stuff - this was a holiday as well. what amazed me was the shift in my daughter's attitude. We went on safari and did so much stuff, but they loved the days out to the orphanage the best....... and they really are normal kids! My son just rode around on bikes with all the boys there. Before we left I went to the supermarket and bought enough food for 17 people for a month and dry goods/cleaning stuff for 3 months - it cost me £80 can you imagine? I spend well over that for us 3 in a week! The old lady has just gone back over on Saturday, with cheques from me, daughter and son - he gave up 2 weeks pocket money.
Trust me, my kids are not generally pukey do-gooders, they are as much me, me, me as the next one, but this stuff has changed them.
and I did it for SELFISH reasons because I like doing it, I am no Mother Theresa!

I hate to sound brutal, but you sound like a "glass half empty" sort of person.

Its not what you've done, or not done, achievement wise or family wise, its your attitude towards them.

You can change it, but only if you work at it. Positivity is difficult for some...

xeni - adore your island and am in a nice way.
My dream is to buy a wood but the two or three that have been within financial grasp have been too far away for us to ever 'use'. I'm not going to give up on that one though...I may be living in a cardboard box but I will have my wood...!

I spent a day with some work people and one had just bought a wood so as we were killing time we spent it talking about woodland management.

I like this idea of buying tracts of rainforest. They're quite cheap. In a sense I have my own bit of rainforest on the island but many acres of the Amazon does the environment more good.

I felt just like the OP until earlier this year. Never knew what I wanted to do. Then I started up a small business (very small) but it's going great guns. I'm enjoying what I do and I feel like I'm achieving something.

I also get to spend most days with my boys. We've moved to what is a quintissential English Country Cottage. Although the cottage is lovely, it's not what I've enjoyed about the move. It's been the fresh start. I've decided that I'm responsible for my happiness and have been actively trying to make new friends.

All of our neighbours are fairly elderly - but instead of thinking I've nothing in common with them, I've embraced them as surrogate grandparents for my kids (whose own grandparents don't live in the country). I pick apples from our garden and take them to our neighbours, we pop in for tea and share recipes. Probably sounds frightfully dull to some, but it has given me such a warm sense of neighbourliness that I've never had before.

I've also been making things like spiced apple chutney from the fruits in our garden. AGain - not the world's most exciting occupation, but I get a warm glow knowing that we've produced the fruit and done something with it.

Things aren't perfect. My DH and I do argue a lot. My children don't sleep through the night. I'd love to see my family more often. I would like to travel more.

But so far I've got to live in multiple countries, have travelled a lot, have had a career, have a kind husband and two beautiful boys and now a little business of my own, a sense of community and growing friendships.

So right now, I feel my dream is coming true (not sure what my dream was in the first place). Maybe in a few years I'll be bored but for now, it's good.

Blackduck - surely your lifetime ambition would be to get married in a big floaty white dress?!

Actually, I've felt like this myself in the past. Then I read something about how we all expect to be HAPPY, whereas in fact only a madman is happy all the time. We need to accept that our life is ok, but always to have a little more to aim at. That is the key to CONTENTMENT. Apparently a survey of America's 200 richest people found that they were less happy than the average person, so it's got nothing to do with wealth. I reckon that you need to have enough money not to have to worry about bills, be doing something that benefits other people and have a stable home life. That might be 'boring' but it suits me, even though I 'wasted' all the money my parents spent on my education by doing ordinary jobs and staying at home for 12 years as a full time mum.

JoshandJamie, you sound like you have a fab wee life on the go! Not boring at all

Very interesting thread, hope it continues. On the, "would you give up your £250,000 a year job to be a SAHM" thread, Riab offered to help anybody struggling with the work/life balance type of thing. Apparently she is a life coach and facilitator?? among other things and is happy to help anybody by e-mail. See the post dated 6th Nov. at 11.35am.

Would be very interesting to know if anybody took her up on this offer, and what difference it makes.

upandaway - I know exactly how you feel and it could have been me writing this one month ago. BUT I took stock of my sitaution and decided what I wanted to do to change it.

Everything seemed to resolve around my DH, His job, His Masters degree, his church involvement, then the children and then finally me. ENOUGH!
I work part time in a supermarket 2 evenings a week (given that I used to be a legal exec its a bit of an odd job choice) but gives me a fantastic social life. I'm now 32 and go out clubbing still with all the young students from work and they've given me the energy to think I can start over with a new career and something to look forward to for me. SO, I've enrolled on an MSc in criminology to start in september. I can do it in the evenings as DS is not due to start school for another 3 years and then when both children are in school full time I can start a career again, research and lecturing in criminology which is something that interests me a whole lot.

What would you do again if you could choose anything? remember you are ONLY in your 30s. Find something you want to do and make it happen. Good luck and remember you're not alone in feeling this way but you alone can change it.

I worked as an aid worker in Africa and Latin America, and I was an expedition leader in Africa and Asia. Doing these things has made it easier for me to now accept the limitations of having 2 small children, which is just as well because it does cramp your style a lot doesn't it I agree with the people who say that happy people get their happiness from small things- a joke with the children, beautiful surroundings, having a purple beetle.
I've been taking stock recently about what to do with the remaining 25 years or so of my working life, and I've been thinking to start a charity myself. I thought buying bits of the Amazon would be something I'd give my own money to, but wasn't sure if it's possible, but Xenia's inspired me to go and look into it.

Upandaway, I think you need to follow your own instincts really- if you feel you want to do more, then you should, don't just think you're being ungrateful for what you've got. If your DH earns good money, could you take the children to Africa to work on a project during school holidays? A friend of mine runs Softpower (google it) and they use short-term volunteers to build schools etc. I'm not suggesting this is an answer in itself, but doing something like this can kick-start your imagination and enthusiasm because it gets you out of your normal frame of reference and makes your 'real life' seem much more like one possible option rather than the only path open to you.
When I was an aid worker I worked with a woman who had had children young, then when they'd grown up she went back to college and became a nurse, got a bit of nursing experience, did the tropical diseases course and went off to work for a medical aid organisation. She was in her fifties when she did all this, was I think 59 when I worked with her. And she had more energy than most 20 year olds. It's never too late.
Good luck!
PS I was a geologist once upon a time too, but now it's the Road Not Travelled, since we're doing poetry.

My old uni friend, who I only exchange news with once or twice a year, emailed me today to tell me her dp died suddenly last month. He was 31. He had a heart attack.

It made me stop and think about how lucky I am. And having ds IS my dream, having a dp, who admittedly is a pain most of the time, and a home makes me very happy.

Having a safe, ordinary (ok, read boring) life, is actually ok for me.

I am on my way - started my degree this year and aim to be a teacher in 5 years time This might just enable me to live the dream and have a job I love and afford build our own house. It is hard work though.

Anyone can set up as a life coach. All mumsnet posters could do it tomorrow, I think. I bet it's better paid than a lot of jobs some people do. It a career of choice for a lot of women who've given up their previous job.

Lots of people start or change careers late. Wasn't there an author who wrote her first novel at 70 and several very successful ones after that? My father worked full time until he was 77 and my ex fatherinlaw in his 80s still works several days a week so any mother in her 30s or 40s who thinks it's too late is really quite wrong and in fact being able to fill the years when the chidlren are teenages and don't want to know you and your partner may be as busy as he'll ever be in his career and the menopause is looming etc - that's the time to plan for so there are lots of things in your life that hang well together. I suppose can always retreat to my island to nurse my hot flushes in due course.

Well said panic pants Better not to wait for a tragedy to make the change and appreciate what you have.

Any ideas on where to get training as a life coach? The idea of setting up, unqualified, fills me with the heeby jeebies. Connotations of oddbods with ego issues...

There's probably a big market in training life coaches too. You could set up as a life coach trainer tomorrow probably make even more money and then sell dodgy certificates. I am probably annoying all life coaches here so I'll shut up.

There must be bodies you can get training from.

Life coaching.

What a load of shit.

Haven't read all this thread, but to be very controversial, you could say you can't miss what (you feel) you've never had?

I was in the British team for my chosen sport, and one a gold medal at the European Championships. I then have had a successful legal career as a solicitor in the City. I've given it "all up" to be a mum to 2 gorgeous kids, but some days just can't get my head round what has become of me. I feel I have lived my life and can never get back to the dizzy heights of what life previously offered me. I do not regret my decision to put the family first - our circumstances did allow it, and I believed (and probably still do) that it was the best thing to do for the children. But I recognise the regret I feel often!

YOu just can't win....

moondog!

Who the heck is dumb enough to pay good money for a life coach?!

A bit like being a Counsellor, I guess - great way for middle aged, middle class women to feel that they're not wasting their lives.

ps I'm middle class & well on the way to middle age & have no desire to do either of these jobs.

Oh,there's an uttelry ludicrous middle aged woman called Nina Grunsfeld or something who writes a life coaching column in the Saturday Telegraph.

Am convinced it is one huge piss take.It is all staggeringly obvious in manner of those 'Learn yerself Feng Shui kits that sell for about £3 in crappy shops. You know the sort...

'To maintIN A HARMONIOUS AIRFLOW THROUGH YOUR HOME,OPEN THE WINDOWS.'

(So irritATED that typing has gone awry..)