What would you have done with your life if things had been different?

I was a bank manager for several years, but in my day-dreaming moments I always wanted to be a pantomime dame.

Don't know where to start with this one but I guess it would be easier to say what would I do the same and then the answer would be simple, nothing.

I don't know whether I am just feeling sorry for myself at the minute but have this sinking feeling that it is all just slipping by and I can't do anything about it. I had my children very young and let a potentially excellent career slip after getting pregnant, marrying a waste of space and having to take on a rubbish job to support us all. Finding myself a single parent and had to do whatever to make ends meet. I always thought having my kids young would mean that I would have time to myself as I got older but I couldn't be further wrong. Work full time in a stressful environment doing a job I hate, have elderly parents who need help, even more elderly granny, 3 grandchildren who I have 2 days a week including overnight (I adore them so wouldn't change this for the world). Can't remember when I last had a holiday 9or even a weekend break)as don't even bother to book them now as have had to cancel so many at the last minute I have lost count.

What can I do to change things?

I wanted to be a photographer, but that didn't happen .. or did it, yes its true I didnt make a living at it but on the other hand I have married, had three wonderful children, I have three grandchildren and my life as on the whole been very happy and I have photos, hundreds of them showing my life over the years.
Would I do things differently if I could go back in time, yes a bit, but I am sure I would still have married, but I would have waited a little longer , and I would have had children later than I did. I was 20 when I had my first child.

I wanted to be a dress designer. Had a scrapbook and drew dresses using smoothed out, shiny, toffee papers as examples of fabric. I was about seven at the time. My well-meaning father told me...'artists starve in garrets'...

I always wanted to be a nun.

mmm - things turned out rather differently lol.

This isn't even a question that enters my head.
In my experience life takes so many unexpected twists and turns, and it really is something that 'happens, while you are making plans'
As others have said, "if life had been different you wouldn't be who you are", and why would you not want to be who you are?
I don't believe in regrets. I take opportunities - often very random ones, and even if they don't work out, at least I know I 'gave it a go'
That's all you can aim for, I think

As you say Granjura, you cannot go back. I would have liked to have had our children earlier, but things prevented that. Had we had them younger, I might now be saying, I wish we had them later.
All in all I am happy with the outcome of my life.

dorset I'm so pleased for you that you have all your family around you now.

Who knows - what is the point of going back. We can never change the past - ans pending too much time trying to do so, stops you going forwards and making changes for your future

I too had a baby at 19 and unmarried. I was in a Mother and Baby Home in Hampstead for 6 before and 6 weeks after having my son, he was then adopted. We had no choice then - either financially, careerwise or parental. Too long a story. He too found me when he was 36 years old, that was 10 years ago and we all [two other grown up children] get on very well.Would I change the past and not had him, and not had my career interrupted? No not all. However, I did get married at 23 years old and I didn't fufil half of the things I wanted to - especially travelling with my career. However, before I got married I did live in Geneva for a year and when married lived in NY for 7 years. I would have loved to have gone to uni but afer 19 schools it just wasn't possible. I would have loved a History degree and gone on to to do research . Ahb well, I still had a great life.

I always told my kids to follow their talents. Make a career out of what you enjoy and life becomes so much easier. Take your chances when they occur and don't be afraid. More and more I see life as a series choices, forks in the road. When you come to one you make a decision and wham! the future changes forever.
So choose wisely and follow your heart.
Me, I wish I'd worked harder at school and had someone to give me the advice I gave my kids. I made wrong choices, ignored what I was good at in the pursuit of new experiences. It wasn't a disaster, one door closes and another opens, but when I look back I see so many missed opportunities.
The biggie is that I confused first sex with love and got married too soon and the really annoying thing is that deep down, I knew it but went ahead anyway.
Abandoned in my fifties and living alone for the first time (scary!), I finally found some wisdom and some confidence to really be myself and live my own life.
My children say that I have "flourished", a lovely word, a great feeling!
I'll never be that brilliant musician/artist/writer that I might have been but I'm truly happy and content. In my sixties now, life is sweet.

Ah just read all these what moving stories. Glad tha babies found their mums. I could see myself objectively from these, I went along with the crowd, felt guilty because I didn't want to stay at Domestic Science college and the teachers thought I was naughty to leave. I had no self knowledge or confidence. I did suddenly rebel at 34 and joined the womens movement but had to carry on with the choices I had made. Though like others I can't imagine not having the children and grand children. My mother said in her 80's your life is all mapped out for you, meaning herself. I can see what she means, even knowing what I do now I am glad most things happened.

When I first lived on my own at 58 I went shopping for food and thought 'what do I like?' and started eating alsorts of different things and so enjoyed it. At 60 when I retired I got lead to bingo, committees, coffee mornings not knowing what I wanted or liked. 12 years down the line I have done archaeology, been on the stage, enjoyed my own company, tried and rejected numerous things and still questioning what do I really want before blindly agreeing to go along with others.

I try to let the grandchildren see their choices and avoid such a lot of dead ends and wasted years. But they have so many choices now and are so busy.

Welcome auntteaser and Susiethegreat - try not to get addicted - Gransnet is a real waster of time!

I agree with Seventimesfive that most of us did what we were told in 50/60s and I don't remember giving a lot of thought to what I wanted to do - I just did what my parents (or my mother!) thought best. Having a daughter who got to grammar school, and thereby earned the "right" to wear the dreadful hat, my mum was one up on the neighbours and therefore happy (for a while). In fact, I would probably have been much better going to the secondary modern and gaining some practical skills (eg shorthand and typing) because I was bullied and very unhappy at school and couldn't wait to leave!

I have, I discovered eventually, great organisational skills, can cope well under stress and have good interpersonal skills. Or, did those things come about because of the way my life went!

I would have been more careful NOT to get pregnant and ruin my college course.
Then I wouldn't have married him.
(....negative!)
I should have got into horticulture and then I would have known more while I still could physically do it !
Or I should have learned more history and I wouldn't be envying the experts on Time Team
Or I should have gone to art school, maybe.

I wish I'd trained as a nurse but as a teenager I would faint at the sight of blood and join in with the vomitous ones!
Fast forward 25 years and I work frontline in the ambulance service and can cope with vomit and blood. Have finally found my niche and love it.

Welcome SusietheGreat! I have used two books I found on Amazon useful to start me off - Write Your Life Story and Times of our Lives by Michael Oke. They trigger off all sorts of memories and stopped me from feeling that whatever I wrote had to be perfect (family conditioning!)

Funny you should bring it up what you would have due because I have been thinking of how I record what I have actually done, like a biography... sort of and I am not quite sure how to start - any ideas?

Hello auntteaser and welcome! Like seventimesfive I really should be up and doing, but there's always the temptation just to have a quick look at GN, then get hooked into all the chat. Right, I'm off. In a minute. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Welcome auntteaser! Hope you enjoy your time here among these great women but beware getting addicted! There are loads of other things I should be doing, but here I am tapping away.
I've thought about this quite a bit. The biggest effect on my life I think was my parents decision not to allow me to take up the grammar school place I was offered after the 11+ but to send me to a convent school. I do think that the whole course of my life has been affected by this. However, who knows? If I had gone to university at 18 instead of doing an OU degree at 30 with 5 children there is a strong chance that I would have played and not got a degree. What I would really have liked to do was to get an English Lit degree and then been a writer or done something in the theatre. These are both life long passions but not something that would have been allowed to do by my chartered accountant father. Like many others I wish that I had stood up to him and made my own choices. But life was not like that in the late 50's/early 60's for most of us and I initially ended up in a bank before getting married at 21.
I have had an eventful and interesting life, unconventional in my parents terms, lived in Africa, worked as a social worker, had five wonderful children and now seven just-as-wonderful grandchildren. I am now starting to write my life story. I live alone, have good friends and all in all I am happy and contented with my life and proud of what I have achieved. So onwards and upwards! (I really must go and put the washing on).

I often wonder what I would have done differently. I was 'guided' into teaching by my school - main reason being that I was good with children - no choice big sister to three! I wish I had resisted having decisions made for me and that I had gone to university rather than teachers' training college. I did teach for over thirty years nad went on to do an OU degree so it all worked out ok I suppose. But.....not sure teaching was the right choice.
This is my first post - just joined Gransnet.

I've remembered! A couple of Tess Gerritson's books include a paleoanthropologist. One might be The Bone Garden - not sure, as I gave my copy away.

No Jeni not Kay Scarpetta - I've got a few Patricia Cornwell books, too. I'll probably wake up at 3 am and remember!

I missed out the n

Jeni it's Patricia Cornwell that writes the Kay Scarpetta novels.

Read one of them some time ago - I must get hold of another one. As I remember she was some sort of a sleuth. Thanks for reminding me Jeni.