What do you do when you've got what you wanted?

A profound question for a saturday night, well why not?

I feel like I'm stuck in a rut. My life is monday to friday go to work, come home, have tea, maybe potter in the garden, go to the beach or visit my mam. Saturday visit my dad, sunday bored. Monday back to work and so on and on and on.

Trouble is, and I'm not bragging (I have simple wants), I've got everything I wanted. I have nothing left to aim for. Years ago I set out to build a decent career. Done that. I wanted to settle down with a lovely wife and maybe become a daddy. Tick. I wanted to move back to my home town, and for several years kept aiming to wangle it for 'next summer', until redundancy came along, presented the opportunity I was waiting for, and moved back. Tick. I wanted a nice semi with a car on the drive. Tick. And since I was very young I dreamt of owning a piece of land in the countryside. Tick.

Now what?

 

I get that bored/stuck in a rut feeling. But then I'm stuck at home looking after the kids when theyre not at school. I might feel better if hubby didnt take the car for work, leaving me stuck in the country. But I doubt it.

It'd be great to have loads of money, but I dont think I want hubby at home all the time

 

Learn a new skill?
Take on an OU degree?
Get involved with some voluntary work?
Learn a new language (for when your little one goes to school and starts learning one ... get ahead of the game).

Above all, I think, do not become complacent with what you have because life has a nasty little habit of pulling rugs out from under you.

So, ask the question another way around: if you have all that *you* wanted, does your wife have all *she* wants? How about your Mam and Dad? If they haven't, is there something they want to achieve in life that you could get involved and help them with?

I've been "orphaned" since my mid-20's, and I've lost count of the times the thought has crossed my mind of things I would have loved to have experienced with either of my parents, or my big brother who never reached his 40's. And it wasn't until my mother opened her heart to me when she was dying that I learned of the things she had wanted to experience with me as I grew older, or simple things she'd never got around to doing (like, visiting Harrods - it was definately achievable; it just never happened ).

BTW, it is so lovely to hear of someone who has achieved what they wanted to do. That's quite special

 

Have a quick affair - get found out - get divorced - lose 50% of all you've got.
Start over with new targets













Wakey, Wakey Clueless.
It was only a bad dream

 

How about doing something your interested in for example I've got a list of 20 sport stadiums I want to visit before I die dotted all over the world. How about seeing the Aurora Borealis, The Grand Canyon, The Taj Mahal, Stone henge, Niagara falls. The whole planet is full of amazing things to see and do

 

I'm happy again now for the time being. Wife and I have had a chat, and we've agreed that we're going to move house. The next mission is to make that possible, given that it will cost me a bit more than this place, but we're going to move closer to the town centre and the beach. Its likely to mean a smaller garden, but given that I still have about 1/3rd of my current garden unused, I reckon I can live with that if it means the beach is only a few minutes walk away.

 

Excellent, I'm so glad you said this. Would you believe it, I've always wanted to do that but I'd actually forgotten that I want to do it.

Also, I've always wanted to cycle from the top of the Pyrenees do the Mediterranean coast. I'd forgotten that I wanted to do that too.

 

Glad to of helped :D My dad has seen it and even he says its breathtaking

 

There are plenty of people in the world that do not have what they want, you could help them achieve that.

 

I already do what I can for others as long as they try for themselves too. Sometimes people whine about something, and you try to help them change it, but they don't put the effort in themselves.

To get what you want takes two things:
1. What you want has to be within the realm of possibility. A career, house, family is within the realm of possibility. Buying a country and becoming a pseudo god, beyond the realm of possibility. Retiring on a small farm, possible. Becoming a mafia boss and evicting everyone from some lovely island in the med so that you can relax on a sun lounger in your later years and have cocktails served to you buy a team of scantily clad young ladies, beyond the realm of possibility.

2. You have to want it. Not just feel like it might be a sort of good thing maybe. It has to be the driving force in your life. Every decision you make has to be influenced by whether or not it is going to help you get what you want. For the last few years of my time in Sheffield, I really wanted to leave the job and move back here, but I knew that I couldn't afford a deposit for a house, especially as prices were still inflated at the time. I knew there was a collapse coming (obvious to anyone outside of banking or government it seems), and I also knew that I had an excellent redundancy package and that the job I was on only had a few years left on it, so I stuck it out. When the first round of redundancies finally came, I wasn't quite ready, and neither were some of my colleagues, so I put myself forward as our rep (and was duly elected) and fought for all our jobs. Nobody in our department lost their jobs. Four lads took voluntary transfers to better positions, and two more of us got to stay because I'd made a sound case demonstrating that the last of the work couldn't be completed on time with the team make-up that management proposed. By 12 months later, when redundancy reared its head again, this time I was ready. The house price crash was well under way, so I volunteered. It was scary. I volunteered for redundancy before I'd secured anything else. All my instincts were telling me to fight tooth and claw for my job, but logic was prevailed, as it fitted nicely into my grand scheme. I got another job and then bought this house using my redundancy money for the deposit. I very nearly blew it. A simple miscalculation meant I had to borrow a couple of grand from family, for which I am eternally grateful, but I'd done my sums wrong. Years of planning, and I was nearly scuppered by something as daft as failing to account for the amount of fuel my car would use going on a much longer daily commute than I was used to.

 

Hi C1

Take a listen...

 

Good thread, Clueless, I think about this a lot as well. Good input from those who point out that total freedom to achieve personal fulfilment is not open to many, but those of us who think we have unused potential often fret about it. I'm especially aware that time starts to run out eventually - remember those heady days when you believed that you were immortal and there would always be world enough and time......?

 

Clueless, I get bored if I've got nothing to do. I can't just sit and relax, I've got to be doing something, anything.

I can't really watch tv with full attention either. I set my self targets all the time, so that keeps me occupied for long periods of time.

 

I find this thread quite sad - of course I suppose I should be slightly envious that you have managed to achieve everything you wanted to in life, but to have no goal, nothing to aspire to, to look forward to or aim for .....

I've got thousands of things I'd like do, all theoretically achievable (which is why I aim to live until I'm at least 130!), but none of them so desperate that if I was told tomorrow I couldn't do any of them, I wouldn't be resentful. For now, I'm just supremely grateful for the things I do have.

! suppose it bears out the saying 'Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it'

 

No problem - take up gliding!

Cheers, Tony.