I met someone last week who wished that they “hope i find what i am looking for” when we bade farewell. It irked me, i’m not searching for anything. Granted there are many women my age doing similar things that probably are. I came across one woman on the trans Siberian train who unashamedly was “hunting” for a husband. After spending the 12 hours that she was on the train with us recounting stories of her past sexual endeavours in graphic detail, i’m not sure she’s going about the best way to do it in all honestly but each to their own! I have also been asked several times in the last few months if want kids, as if doing what i’m doing should rule that out forever as an option.
Fear not people, all who wander are not lost! Some of us have very clear goals and plans for our life journeys. I may get physically lost at times (not enough for my liking recently!) but I don’t need to “find myself” I know exactly what i want from my life and i am carving a path to get to it. Which happens to involve a fair amount of international travel, just in a different way to what i’ve been doing for the past few years. I also don’t need to have a man in my life, it’s nice when the stars align to bring good people into my world but it’s not a necessity. I somehow manage to survive without one by my side at all times. It’s amazing really…
The assumption that I should be doing certain things because I am a certain age is stifling and maddening at times. The family life one actually started when i was in back home, i vividly remember chatting to a taxi driver who was doing the standard fare patter and i told him i was getting the train to China the following week. He grilled me, “are you married?” “do you have kids?” “what about your house?” “how old are you?” when i responded with 31 he breathed a huge sigh of relief and said “oh that’s OK then, you have time…” I have time for what exactly? I have time to settle into what your model of the world looks like and get back into “the formula” before what happens? Will i trigger an apocalypse if i don’t marry and procreate before a certain time?
Some people just have a natural curiosity about the world and an insatiable desire to experience it for themselves. I learn by doing, seeing and hearing people’s stories. That is what this adventure is about for me. No i don’t have kids, I think i’d quite like some eventually. That’s part of a commitment in a loving relationship, not something that i just want from life regardless. So it doesn’t really come into my thinking at the moment as i am not in that situation. I do know that i haven’t learnt enough about the world or seen enough of it yet to feel like i’m ready to make that undertaking in any case. Which is why i feel the need to embrace my freedom and encourage my creative and curious spirit to live and work more flexibly for the next few years. Learn languages, immerse myself in the culture and history of different places. Even my own country from afar in many places! Which at the very least nurtures the education of my beautiful god children the littlest Potters.
There seems to be an assumption that is that this is some sort of phase that i will get over and then go back to my life in the UK eventually too. It’s not, living and (eventually!) working overseas is a lifestyle choice for me, i spent 13 years working hard at a fabulous career based in the UK, but it wasn’t enough. It stopped stretching me, and i needed to do add a new facet to it. I think back to working 6 months in a role for which the most amount of travel involved was walking to another building in the same complex. It drove me mad, and made me feel so sad to imagine that was my life for the foreseeable future. I left, it just didn’t make me excited about getting out of bed every day. I need new places, people and challenges in my world to keep it interesting and inspiring for me. That’s just me, other people need different things and i respect that.
I am certain that the journey will take all sorts of detours and i will be back in the UK at some point. But the end destination will be the same. I will be a more well rounded human being, better able to educate and inspire my family whatever shape that takes. It’s sad that in the modern age that seems to be the primary way that people define success is solely a traditional formula. That people i come across feel the need to ask these personal questions to assess how they feel about my life, it’s none of their business really. I need to get better at my witty responses to these questions, answers on a postcard please!
Mild rant, but an honest reflection of my frustration at constantly being asked if i want babies. I find it really odd. I don’t think men are asked these questions at all, it’s far more readily accepted if they forge their own paths.
Baci a tutti, an exasperated cake lady!
x x x x
