Aspirations
My initial reaction to reading the word ‘aspirations’ was panic…
What are my hopes and my ambitions?
What are my aims?
What is my purpose?
Why is thinking about this making me my heart race?
Being totally honest, life feels pretty hard at the moment and so I mainly hope we survive the next year in tact, and that I keep my head and boat above water.
I know I want to achieve some small tangible things too. This year, while Micheal is studying I’d like to design some more maps… I’ve had a map ‘wish list’ since I released my first design four years ago and so far I have only ticked a few off. I desperately want to finish our video series. I want the head space to get more creative with my video editing. I want to learn Pro-create. I want to design and sell more earrings.
I realise that these things read like a to-do list rather than a list of hopes for my future.
I often think about the aspirations so many of us are conditioned to have, especially women. The dream that was sold to me and my friends when I was in primary school, was the fairy tale happy ending. Find a prince and live happily every after, in other words find a husband and start a family. I think this is probably what I aspired to for far too many years. Of course the fairy tales don’t specify what the truth of ‘happily every after’ actually is. The mundane reality of married life and motherhood is deliberately omitted. It’s not in the interest of the patriarchy to be honest about this day to day existence in those enticing illustrated children’s books.
I was sad to come to the realisation that for me, career ambitions were definitely secondary to this vague fairy tale life. I also realise that I thought certain career and life ambitions were out of my reach anyway. There were various reasons for this; some because I was female, some I didn’t think I was brave enough for, some I didn’t think I was smart enough for and some I convinced myself I didn’t want… even though I probably did. Of course I don’t exclusively blame my lack of ambition on my early influences. It was my responsibly too, but I do wonder why I was so unambitious.
Twenty or so years ago I think all I aspired to was a comfortable life; to have a nice home and a nice family. Some friends and some holidays. Looking back I find it so sad that the hight of my ambition was to live the 9-5 life. That’s all thought I could achieve. Living for the weekend. Spending far too much of my time working for one corporation or another, to earn more money to buy more stuff to make me ‘happy’.
When I was in my 20’s I had my blinkers firmly on and I was speed walking on life's treadmill, trying hard not to fall off. Trying to follow the course that society had dictated I wanted. In reality I hated my well paid job, I earned enough money to pay the mortgage on the house, that was in hindsight, too big for me, but I had to keep that well paid job, to keep paying that mortgage. And, I had tried so hard in relationships that were toxic, sacrificed too much, and had failed to find that mythical prince.
Something had to change.
I had a new ambition.
So… in hindsight, thank goodness I had ‘failed’ to find a husband. That ‘ultimate prize’ for a woman. And, thank goodness I had ‘failed’ to start a family. Not achieving those two things actually gave me the freedom to think about want I really wanted to do. Not that it felt like freedom at the time. At the time, I was so disappointed and depressed. It felt like a second choice not the second chance it actually was. The gift to choose to step off the treadmill and find a different path.
I started making plans to take an extended trip travelling overseas.
I aspired to see what was out there in the wider world. I wanted to see if I could explore it on my own.
And I could and I did.
That year, 2013-2014 was the best year of my life.
I spent 11 months travelling around the world and I met Michael along the way. When I stopped looking for a relationship I found one. And I hit the jackpot.
I still aspired to be a mother, but that didn’t happen and I am ok with that. I didn’t think I would be, but I am. I might write more about that another time but this isn’t the blog for that.
Once my trip ended I didn’t want to stop moving. I wanted to keep experiencing new places and new cultures. We lived in New Zealand for 15 months, we lived in LA for 12 months, we had a month India, and month in Nepal and a month in Indonesia along the way. And we still aspired to keep moving. So we bought our narrowboat Perseverance and we didn’t stop travelling until we saw all there was to see on the waterways.
We have now hit pause because Michael wanted to realise one of his aspirations. He has gone back to university. This is a very important year, and we need to get through it so we can realise future aspirations.
But what are they?
I’ve decide to write an aspiration to-do list for myself. Most of these I have been thinking about for years but i have never written them down before. I’m sure there are more, and when I think of them I’ll come back and edit this post.
More extended travel - 12 months plus overseas
Live off grid on a small piece of land and have goats and chickens and a huge vegetable patch.
Learn how to make silver jewellery
Walk the Camino de Santiago
Walk the coast to coast
See a blue whale
Never renovate another narrowboat
I also have som personal growth aspirations but I didn’t feel it was appropriate to share them here.
Thanks so much for reading some of the thoughts I chose to share on this blog.
If you want to read more about my year travelling a wrote a short book about it which you can find here
Please feel free to comment your aspirations below (assuming I have managed to turn on the comment feature correctly)