Are you living a life you never dreamed of when you were younger?

There is nothing in the loops and turns of my life [both good and bad] that I would EVER have imagined in my wildest dreams.

If someone had told me when I was 20 that I would one day give up a 25-year career with a company that I respected, sell my house and give away most of my belongings in order to move to a small, rainy town in England and be the housewife for a somewhat eccentric man, I would have laughed in their face.

I grew up in Oakland with an incredible view of San Francisco.
I worked in The City for 7 years, and I loved it. I wanted to move there, but I also wanted to raise kids, and didn’t feel SF was the best place to do that (in the neighborhoods I could afford).
In a few years I retire to a very rural area. Population 2,500. Nearest movie theater: 25 miles away.
And I can’t wait.

Not at all. I am living a better one.

I’m living a life that I never wanted to as a child. For fuck’s sake, I still live with my parents. I swore as a child that I’d rather be homeless than live with them past 18. Well so much for that wishful thinking. I’m glad the Kenny of my childhood can’t see the Kenny of today. I’d hate myself.

@kenmc It’ll get better. Jon and I were 20 and living with my parents. It sucked, especially when my mom walked in on us when we were… (oh, never mind)….. sigh.

@jonsblond Hey, at least you were getting laid. and I’m 22…

@kenmc You’re fucked then. sorry to say~

I grew up in a small town on the east coast of the USA. then moved to the city and I loved it and the corporate life for years. Then I grew weary of it all, built a kennel in a small town and went to the dogs. I loved that for 15 years when I fell in love online with an aussie. So I moved to Australia over 12 years ago and still love it here. There is always a new adventure to be had and being on this side of the world opens up travel to so much of Asia. When I moved here, we started out in Sydney, moved to an ocean village in Queensland, then to the middle of nowhere in the Northern Territory and now back to civilization. No I never ever dreamed this is where I would be at age 66 but I wouldn’t change it for anything. (GQ)

I am certainly living a life I would never have expected in my youth and loving it. I have always had the attitude that anything is possible though so perhaps it isn’t so unexpected.

I didn’t expect to be working this hard at something I don’t really enjoy at age 50+.

I didn’t expect that I’d be living in America. I was born in a very poor town in Russia and my family spent every penny they had on trying to send me to school. I was adopted by a family in the United States at the age of 14, and from there my life became pretty great. I am going to college now, I’m the first person in my family to pursue a higher education, and I’m doing all of the things that I love most.

I was born and raised in small towns in Indiana. Once a year we went on vacation, road trips to Wisconsin or to Colorado. That was the extent of our travels. But, when I graduated from High School, we wound up traveling to England and South Africa. It was the first time my parents were ever on a plane! After that, I continued and went to Switzerland, Canada, Hawaii and the Marshal Islands. As a child, I would have never thought that I would go anywhere outside the US.

Yep…totally. The only thing I knew was what I wouldn’t do and that was to NOT be a Realtor. Even failed there as I had a brokers license for 7 years. At least I didn’t make that my main line of work.

But now?? HS! Look at me now Ma!! lol!

Nope not yet, but there is always hope. You never know when I could decide it’s time for a change and try doing something I always dreamed of…

I remember being at people’s houses and they had walls! My father had decided to rip the roof of our house and build a second story when sister #4 arrived. He is a guy who never finishes anything he starts so we ended up with outside walls but no inside ones. I/We lived that way for years and it was embarrassing. I was driven to live a better life and happily I do. My house has walls and we actually take care of it.

More importantly we don’t live paycheque to paycheque sometimes praying that the paycheque will arrive. That was unbelievably anxiety inducing as a child. My children haven’t really known that level of uncertainty.

My husband is a wonderful one and a great father.

My life is markedly different from the one I grew up with.

I did it. I had the golden ticket. One that would move me to France, as well. I left it all. I looked at my family and said, “enough.” I walked away the next month.

I had a job with a fortune 500 company, moving up the ladder and making a name for myself. I had what a lot of people want. We had the McMansion. In fact, we were looking at a bigger one and that was even overwhelming.

One night, I told my husband I couldn’t do it anymore. He laughed and said, “good!” I crafted my resignation and never looked back.

We bought a smaller house that needed complete renovations, craftsman style house. We put our touches on it and I love it…so does my family. We changed school districts to get out of the “keeping up with the joneses” district. The neighborhood we bought into had a regrowth, seems like a lot of us felt the same way. Mostly good people. A few social climbers. Hope they learn what matters most, too.

My husband has a workshop in the backyard where he started his business, I started mine inside. I take projects on a fairly regular basis, but never am too overwhelmed.

We allow life and love to happen. We have movie Friday. Family Sunday. Yardwork Saturday. We have a life.

I’m so glad I climbed down the ladder and met my family, again.

I thought I would go to college and be a cultural anthropologist and have a bunch of material shit. Well I am an unlicensed cultural anthropologist of sorts now only I never went to college. I have lived in several big cities and small towns across the USA. I have lived with or worked with and been in social situations/ independent field studies of various ethnic, religious, sexual orientations, political views, etc. I’ve lived with a native hawaiin eating spam rice and eggs. He calls me a hippie howlie and himself a moke but we are bruddas mon. Living in Tennessee in a small town I witnessed the annual KKK rally on the town square in Pulaski Tennessee. I lived in a trailer in Alabama and honed my fishing skills on the Tennessee River with the coolest redneck dude drinking High Life and enjoying a few chaws of tobacco. I spent time with my hippie Buddhist friends at The Farm commune in Summertown Tennessee. I have spent time just talking and drinking beer with homeless people in cities under bridges. I went to a Mexican coworkers home where his whole family was having a fiesta where they slaughtered, butchered, and barbecued a goat. It was interesting. Living in Portland Oregon I met and lived with all sorts of people most of whom were very liberal and not conservative southern baptist like where I grew up. I lived with a gay male couple for a while. Went out to the gay bar with them a few times. Became friends with a drag queen during that time. I lived in a poor black neighborhood in Chattanooga Tennessee and learned about and was accepted into a very different way of living than I was exposed too growing up. I learned all about pimps ho’s, welfare, hustling food stamps, the best soul food, the importance and closeness of one another good and bad in that situation. One of my best friends was once a bank robber that spent time in federal prison where he converted to the black Muslim faith. I lived with another dude in Miami who is now one of my closest friends. He is Dominican. His whole family treated me like family. I ate rice beans, plantains, yucca and pollo tropical almost daily. I worked with him. Our boss was Ecuadorean. The other employees on our crew were Cuban and Columbian. Other people I met at the construction site and spent time around were Haitian, Jamaican, Cuban, and other all other cultures mostly caribbeans, and central and south americans. I lived in a nice suburban neighborhood there. My neighbors were Dutch, haitian, puerto rican, African american, jamaican, and Dominican. I observed first hand more than once how being incarcerated in jail is. How to hustle my Meds or stamps for peoples food. How to improvise with the few things you have to make your time a little easier. I’ve been in the looney bin for being sad but saw what being batshit crazy really is. I struggled with drugs I never in a million years thought I would ever do when I was younger. Definitely not where I expected to be back 10–15 years ago at this point in my life. I’m still unsure what’s next. I will just sit back for now and wait for my wave to come then catch it and ride it until it breaks.
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Yes but not in a good way. I always imagined I’d go to a university right out of high school, get a good job, get married, and live happily ever after. I never thought I’d be living with a guy I wasn’t married to, or have psychological issues, or not be in a regular university.

I don’t know if I dreamed qua dream of a life when I was younger. I certainly had a number of hopes, but I never thought I would be able to make them come true. Now those dreams are coming true or have come true, even though I never expected them to come true. I have, oddly enough, become the person I wanted to be. It’s not a person most people want to be, but I guess what happened was I stopped fighting being who I was and suddenly I am he.

Yes, I have more material things then I ever would have imagined. I also have health problems I never would have imagined. I live in a state I never would have imagined. So many things.

backs slowly out of the question . . .

love you baby!

Not really but it’s definitely not in the top 3 teen dream scenarios I envisioned. I live in a state where I wouldn’t have even wanted to visit and I’ve been here past the 5yrs I signed myself up for. The upside is the rest of my life is pretty wonderful and I can leave this place in a few years time if my partner is up for it.

I’m living exactly the life I dreamed of when I was little. I have a loving husband, children, grandchildren, a house in California with a picket fence and a pool in the back yard. I have everything I ever wanted.

I wanted to grow old with husband, children and their mates and children around, do some travelling. Nursing pays pretty well. First I got divorced, and now am disabled. Would never have dreamt the disabled part. I come from good farm stock; aunts living to 94, 95, 87 all taking care of themselves.