Did Your Life Turn Out the Way You Imagined It Would, As A Youth?

SeaBreeze

SeaBreeze

Endlessly Groovin'
Location
USA
Most of us, when we were young, even pre-school age, imagined how things would be when we grew up. Did your life turn out the way you imagined it would as a youth?

Mine didn't at all. I imagined that I would grow up, fall in love and have a big church wedding in a fancy white gown. I thought that I would have a couple of kids, and stay home raising them, as a housewife, like my mother did with us. Then I figured I'd be a grandmother, bouncing my grandchildren on my knee in my rocking chair.

I did fall in love, but had no desire for a big wedding, so was married by a justice of the peace in a small ceremony, with just a few friends. I never had any children, and I worked full-time for my entire adult life. How about you, did things happen the way you imagined?
 

Wow, that's kind of a tough question. When I was a kid I don't remember thinking about what I was going to be when I grew up. I guess I always supposed I would be like my parents...middle class factory people workin' hard to make a buck. I think about everyone dreams of the "perfect" one and I conclude that there are none. Just those we are more tolerant of their faults and they of ours. I still believe in love but as I've gotten older I realize more what "love" is. I've made a lot of stupid mistakes and had my fair share of epic fails but I never thought I could have children...and I had a daughter WIN! Then she had 3 children!! WIN! WIN! WIN! Those guys, along with her husband, rock my world. It's been a bumpy ride but as that old Elton John song goes, "I'm still standin' na! na! na!!"
 
I never had weddings and blissful domesticity play any part at all in my fantasies. Didn't see any future in that at all.
Wouldn't even play with dolls so kids were never in the picture.

I was going to be a scientist, or space cadet or famous painter or an archeologist, paleontologist or Egyptologist, or astronomer, cattle rancher, veterinanrian or whatever else interested me that week. Think 'Calvin'.

Those fantasies were shattered by the advice Mother's gave daughters in those days that "girls don't do those things."
Then they were further dusted when I realized that I'd never master maths past +-X and : and would never get into a Uni to study anything at all.
Couldn't find a single interest that didn't involve numbers to some degree. Bummer.

So I did the best I could with what I had and just read up on the results that all those other smarter people who did follow those careers produced. I still found out all I needed to know about the stuff that interested me without doing the work required, so I figured that was a win after all. I couldn't have done them all, but I could read the latest gen on them all.

So life hasn't turned out as I fantasized, but since reality bit it has turned out pretty much as I imagined it would.
 

My life as I thought it would be has as much similarity to what it is now as a stapler has to a train.

From kindergarten to my first semester of college I was sure I was going to be a scientist. The Great Tao had other ideas.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not unhappy with how it turned out. It just wasn't what I thought it would be.

I never even thought about getting married until I met my future wife, and a year later we were married. Then I thought we would never be apart, but 15 years later we were.

I thought I would die hairy - I never imagined I'd live bald. :rolleyes:
 
I don't remember what I thought as a kid, but I remember being in school and wanting to be a structural engineer.. Fascinated with bridge building..
The only structure I ever built was a patio for our new house and even then, I had help..

I ended up being a commercial investment consultant for some years and then being the owner of a few video clubs.....

I retired at the age of 56 years old .. Moved away from Montreal (the big city) to a small village in Northern Ontario..

Don't ask !!!!!!
 
No way could I have imagined the roller coaster ride my life has been or where/what I'd be today. I can't say I have no regrets - but it is what it is (or was) and I'm certainly not unhappy the way things turned out. A high school dropout that plunged into the whirlwind of the '60's. Spent a sum total of two weeks in college. But I survived (many of my friends didn't). Worked twice as hard for half as much to raise a family: 3 kids, today, one a mother of 4, one a father of 2 with a law degree, and my youngest, a father of 1 is a radiologist. I've taken big risks, some I won, some I lost - bottom line is I won more than I lost. What can I say but .... life is a caveat...
 
I too had no vision of my life into the future ... I started work as a teacher, joined the military, ran a service (gas) station with a busy mechanical workshop for over twenty tears, started programming databases for repair records, and retired from a large Australian corporation doing systems and applications support.

No plans .... it just happened, it was fun and I was very lucky to have experienced all that and gained so much insight into the human condition. :)
 
I wanted to be a hobo and ride the rails. And I distinctly remember asking my mom if people had to have kids. Thank goodness she said no, it was a not a life requirement.

I really had no goals or ambitions.

I farted around for one year after high school and then went to college for a few years, where I majored in pot smoking at the biology pond in the woods by the campus.

Dropped out and then got a job as a proof reader in a print shop, I'd proof the first prints off the presses and tell the operator what adjustments had to be made and then we'd be off and running, and then I got trained to run printing presses and stayed with it.

Got married when I was 32 and still married to the same man. Neither one of us wanted kids, so we didn't.

I'm happy with my life, if I could go back and change one thing, I would have been better about saving money. So that's not bad!
 
My central focus was always on horses..no matter what I imagined for myself, it always revolved around horses. I made that happen from the time I graduated from high school until a few years ago when I knew that physically my time with horses was up.

Vocationally, I never had a clue as to what profession to pursue..but I fell into two good opportunities that took care of the financial part well enough to have a reasonably good lifestyle and sustain my horse habit.
 
I wanted to be an archeologist when I was young but after realizing that after much schooling and little pay I probably wouldn't be the one out in Egypt at a dig and finding something spectacular. After that I went to college for almost 2 yrs as a French major...was going to teach or translate but dropped out and got married. I met him when I was almost 20... He was 35. He proposed to me after 1 week and we were married 3 months later...everybody was against it and said it wouldn't work but it did for 35 yrs til he died in 2004.
i spent most of my married life taking care of him and my daughter and son and I enjoyed it and was Goood at it.
both my children turned out great, no problems of any kind with them and I think that is because of making them my priority.

Both are Dentists and both have married dentists, so now they help me out a lot, although I don't want them to.

Now that my husband is gone, my children are raising their own children...I'm only 62 and hopefully I can start a second life, although I am quite happy just being a grandma!
 
re:I did fall in love, but had no desire for a big wedding, so was married by a justice of the peace in a small ceremony, with just a few friends.never had any children,

I did the same way but had 3 kids,I had a lot of dreams about my life and what I would do when I grew up but things didnt quite work out that way.
Ive been hearing impaired since the age of 3 and life has not been that great growing up,had a great wife and kids but one thing was missing and I couldnt fix it.(hearing like normal person)
But for the last 4 years I suddenly became the guardian for a 15 year old(grandaughter) and take care of a 7 year old(grandson) while his Dad works.
And THATS when my real second life began.
 
Not quite. Not with my careers or personal life. Too much disappointment.
By my twenties I already intuited that things would not go as planned or as I had hoped.
 
I view my life as I do any project I am in the middle of, it's a work in progress and it is best not to get to detailed with the planning, because sometimes, no most of the time, things happen all on their own.

Oh, I think I am a little past the middle with this aging process thing. banana070.gif


I have to applaud anybody that can have a family and raise decent human beings, it is obviously a very hard thing to do. Judging from what I see of the world and some of the horror stories of others about their children or grand children. I don't think this is a very easy world to grow up in.
 
At first I thought I'd be a doctor...until I realized that math and science would play a big part in my education. Um, no. I don't do numbers. Then I figured an undergrad degree in history and political science would be good, then on to law school. Um, no. Whatsisname, the father of my children, and I had a deal. He'd finish his undergrad/grad degrees while I worked, then it would be my turn, but that didn't happen because we parted ways shortly after he had sheepskins in hand. What I thought would be a life of having a career turned into having jobs instead. They were okay jobs, even pretty great jobs, but as far as I was concerned merely a means to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.

Never expected to raise three kids alone but did. Actually, didn't even really want kids, although I love them fiercely!

Never in a million years thought my grade school sweetheart would find me and we'd marry:love_heart: And never in a million years thought he'd die before I did (five years ago yesterday).

Never in a million years thought I'd become a cleaning lady by choice in my old age and wish it had been the "career" that I'd had. I hope I die with my mop in one hand and my polishing cloth in the other:D

Thank heaven that Whatsisname and I divorced. I'd have had to spend his career being a corporate wife, standing in receiving lines, playing bridge, socializing with mostly plastic people (think Stepford Wives). The very best thing about that divorce is that it was a good excuse to chuck all that stuff, including Junior League. Ew.
 
Not really.....
I was so lucky, one of the first generations of equal opportunity... So I went to Uni, got my degree, but I wasn't as clever as my father!
married the right man, I thought; love my kids; divorced him; then my first boyfriend came back; married him, and I thought....happiness ever after, although rather late.
he died, 7 years ago this month; I eventually gave up work because I ended up hating it ... Here I am.
 
Gosh, Phil, thanks! It appeals to my sense of order, and the rewards are immediate: the satisfaction of standing at the door ready to leave and looking at a nice, clean, sparkly home and having $$ in hand:) Not to mention that I've done something for somebody that needed to be done, that they wanted done and that they couldn't get done themselves.

What's that saying? Find a need and fill it. Now, if I could just clone myself!
 
GeorgiaXplant said:
Gosh, Phil, thanks! It appeals to my sense of order, and the rewards are immediate: the satisfaction of standing at the door ready to leave and looking at a nice, clean, sparkly home and having $$ in hand:) Not to mention that I've done something for somebody that needed to be done, that they wanted done and that they couldn't get done themselves.

What's that saying? Find a need and fill it. Now, if I could just clone myself!
Click to expand...

It's strange, perhaps, but if I had it all to do over again I might have started my cleaning business as soon as I was out of high school, instead of going to college. I understand that feeling of a job well-done, of creating order out of chaos, and getting paid for it just seems like icing on the cake.

The toughest part would be the staffing - as with your clone comment, you're the only one that you can be sure will do a bang-up job. No one else has the drive. When I had my business I lost more sleep getting calls at 5am, telling me that the client's facility hadn't been cleaned properly. I'd have to stagger out to the car and zip over there to do an 8-hour job in 3 hours.

For no extra pay.

You can be sure I had a good talking-to with that employee when I got back to the office.
 
I like being a one-man show, Phil. I always know the job has been done well and done right, don't work for people I don't like, don't have to concern myself with mountains of paperwork for the IRS for employees, whether or not employees will show up on time (or at all!). And it keeps me occupied and out of mischief. Life is good:D

Vivjen, I understand...happiness ever after even it did happen rather late. Ever after ended far too soon:( but the memories? Priceless.
 
Sid is a man of few words. Let us all hope that his "no" response is because his life turned out far better than he dreamed of in his wildest imagination!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top