Are you having the life you envisaged?

I am not sure that I had a plan ?

I certainly didn’t expect to be widowed at 40. Otherwise I think I have had the life I envisaged, I never saw myself as a go-getting career person, and I’m certainly not one. I imagined a quiet life tending my herb garden, and that came true, more or less.. However, I always thought I’d have daughters, but I only have sons. I just didn’t see myself as a mother to boys. It still surprises me.

I never had a plan. Planning is pointless. It all goes wrong anyway.

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans”.

I always thought this was a John Lennon quote but it's not.

I like it though.

I've been extraordinarily lucky - it's all been about the people really. A lovely husband, lovely friends and lovely parents - both sadly gone now.

Every day brings news of heart breakingly terrible things going on in the world and every night in bed I count my blessings before going off to sleep.

How far ahead do you envisage when you are young? I was always career orientated, I hoped I would marry and have children, but wasn't optimistic, but if I did I knew I didn't want to marry before I was 24 or have children before I was 287. This was in the early 1960s, so I think my aims were fairly unusual.

Beyond that I hadn't thought, except that if I had children, which then meant stopping work, I would want to get back to work and resume my career as soon as possible. As it is I married at 24 and had my first child at 28. I went back to work at 35 and resumed my career.

Since I first started working, life has changed in so many ways, technologically and culturally that I could not possibly have envisaged the life I have lived. But my marriage has been happy, our children were born healthy and well and have done well and I have healthy happy grandchildren, there have been tragedies and disasters, but what life is without those.

I have always believed that it is not what happens to you in life that matters but how you deal with it and I have had plenty of opportunites since I was very young child to practice what I preach.

not 287 but 27

Definitely not. But then Covid restrictions have stymied most of the long term plans I had thought about.
Can't wait to go abroad again but won't be doing so for a long time.
No seeing my family as much as I would like.
In that in-between time when I should be retired but am not quite.
Not eating out as much as I would like - i.e. not at all.
Don't know when I'll be able to go back to my church attendance and volunteering.
All a bit dire really. Hoping for an upturn soon.

My plans changed when I met oh always wanted children was very lucky to achieve that would have liked them younger so we were younger when we had gc .We were really poor when I was little so like to have cushion which luckily we have I am easily pleased in general .Retirement not like we planned due to health but I know we are fortunate .My heart goes out to you what have a lot of regrets.

I have to say that, (so far and fingers crossed) my life is much better than I thought it would be when I was younger. My parents divorced when I was young after both having affairs. I didn't think there was such a thing as a happy, faithful marriage.
Luckily, thanks to meeting lovely DH, I was proved wrong. I travelled around the world a bit before I met him and since we've been together we have moved around in the UK. We've had two lovely sons who we always encouraged to work hard and spread their wings. They have done this, and in the current climate this has given us problems due to Covid, but it won't be forever and I look forward to happy times ahead.

I always wanted lots of kids and lots of pets. DH wasn't as keen though, but we've got 2 kids and we've had dogs and cats along the way, but not as many as I would have liked.

I don’t think I ever envisaged being 71, far less planned what my life would be like at my present age, but every day I count my blessings.
I’ve made very few independent decisions along the way - I married at 20 & most choices have been a compromise between me & MrA & fortunately for us both, it has worked out. I know I’m very lucky.

I didn’t have a plan, a lot of, particularly career choices have been a combination of nothing ventured and fortune. We’re comfortable financially, reasonably healthy, two children, two GC’s. I’ve had loads of travel, enabled by my job at the time, been groundbreaking in my second career and I’m content.

Does anybody?
Most of us bumble on doing the best we can, and sometimes it turns out well and often not.
I have a comfortable lifestyle with a DH I have loved for over 50 years so that’s definitely something .

It’s a comfortable existence but a disappointing marriage.

Sunnyoutlook

Savvy

Thank you.

No, probably not. I genuinely feel so much has been totally out of my control. Maybe I would have and be much more content if I had just 'gone with the flow' and accepted the 'whatever'.

I've been pretty lucky, married for 57 years, happy successful children,ups and downs on the way, but all in all we seem to have made it into contented old age.

I can’t complain, although being widowed then Covid lockdown have made me feel like like a different person, an older person.
I would have liked a bigger career in my field so had to compromise when children came along. I was pretty ambitious and I’m glad that desire has gone, it made me restless. I achieved a certain amount and looking back I’m so glad I had the children and would have liked more, such joy they have brought to me. I had a very unhappy childhood, so my greatest satisfaction is when the AC say theirs was idyllic.
I rather like the freedom from work pressure but after two cancer scares, I worry about the future.

My life has been a series of events some good some not good, with resting phases in between. Probably like most other people.
Where I've landed up now is not where I would have ever imagined in my youth but it's turned out well mostly.

Whilst we don’t have a bad life I have been feeling sad about recent developments that I can’t see changing. These make me feel a bit underwhelmed but I know there’s precious little I can do about so I’m just going to have to get on with...I suppose (as usual).
I try not to dwell but sometimes I do wish things had been a little different. That said, I know others have had it so much harder.

We don't always get what we want unless we work very hard at it. It doesn't just happen.

Shrub

No. Husband died aged 60 so all plans for our retirement gone. I have made a new start but don’t like facing my old age and it’s accompanying medical problems on my own.

same here. I am lucky not to have the medical problems but he should not have died (cancer)

Notright

We don't always get what we want unless we work very hard at it. It doesn't just happen.

and sometimes we work hard and it still doesn't happen

No, it isn't how we planned things but we continue to work towards it. I can blame COVID and my mother's recent Alzheimers diagnosis but some of it is down to us dragging our feet. We seem to have run out of steam. If I can hand over to someone for my Mum's care (getting funding will take forever and a day) and can get our house together to put on the market, we might achieve what we want to when travel restrictions/viral scare are out of the way. I'm still dreaming!