Status Quo

Do you remember when you were in school and you were asked, more than once no doubt, what you wanted to be when you "grew up"? Some people knew their answer off by heart and would blurt it out straight away, others needed time to think, irrespective of what age they were when asked the question. For some the answer always stayed the same, for others though, as time passed, the answer changed and they went through several "career changes", before they finally settled on what it was they wanted to do.

Then there were the people like me, who never really knew what they wanted to be or do and who, at nearly thirty four years of age, still has no idea what she wants to be when she "grows up" and probably never will. I am also, just fine with that.

In a world that requires us to be either striving for something or to at least have goals for what we want to achieve or where we want to be in life, not having them and being perfectly happy with the status quo, is foreign to most people. When you tell someone that you don't want to climb the employment ladder, that you have no plans to study anything to either further your career or knowledge or that you don't want to keep up with the Joneses - they question how you can be happy with just standing still.

"But surely you have dreams and goals you aspire to? Things you want to do, achievements you want to look back on?"

Yes & no. In the past I had huge dreams, plans - a life plan even but like it does, LIFE had other plans for me and the life I thought I would be leading, hasn't eventuated and I had to scrap the original dreams & plans I had and make new ones. In the process of making new ones, what I wanted, needed, out of life, changed, dramatically and I now find myself chasing smaller, simpler dreams. Rather than "get a promotion" or "earn more money" or "travel the world" or even "buy a bigger house"; my dreams & goals are things like - have a job that I don't mind; earn enough money to live, with a little bit saved for a rainy day; have a roof over our heads; live simply & happily; travel a bit more & see some places we are yet to see but at the same time, don't be away from either my beautiful dog or my home for too long - I love them both immensely and miss them if I spend too much time away from them.

That being said when I say "home" I don't necessarily mean where we live at the moment. We love our home, we don't love where it is. We are in the process of making it over, so when we work out where our hearts lie, we can follow them in a moments notice.

This has meant a lot of decluttering.

We have learnt along the way that "stuff" doesn't bring you happiness and we've found the more "stuff" we had, the more tied down and suffocated we've felt. We started clearing out last year and now I go through a major cull every 3 months - if it hasn't been used in the past 3 months, it goes. We don't buy new "stuff" unless we really need it, usually we don't, so we go without & save money in the process. A new television doesn't equal happiness for us.

A lot of people don't understand how I can be happy with wanting less & standing still rather than moving forward but to them I say - I have reached a certain rung on "the ladder", both professionally and personally and I like the view from here, so why on earth would I want to move? And I do believe we actually are moving forward, just on our own terms; we're running our own race.

Are you running yours?