not what i had planned

We’re two people short at the office at the moment so it’s been hectic lately. It’s me and my boss to get four people’s work done. Last week and so far this week I’ve been running around like crazy trying to get things done. I’ve been putting in extra hours and working from home in the evenings. Right now working a lot is fine. It gets my mind of other things. Contrary to what I would have thought last year, a job doesn’t make everything pink and glossy. Thoughts still pop up. By working I try to keep them down. I’m not dissatisfied with my life. It’s just that 30 is ahead (29 in a month but I tend to forget that) and I used to think I would be somewhere else. I have so many things I never dreamed of back when I “planned” my life, but I tend to forget that and only focus on the things absent in my life.

As a child I used to think being an adult would be so much better. And now I think being a child was much easier. Sure there was waiting (Only birthday and Christmas once a year? Soon? Soon?), but so many decisions were left to others. Or maybe I just think being a child was easier. Maybe it wasn’t. I’m guessing I won’t ever find out.

I used to think that the autumn of 2001 would be a great one. I would be at university – I’d take a semester off. I would have found the right man by then. We would fly to New England, get a car and drive around enjoying the “fall colours” (which I guess they’re be called over there) and being in love. I wasn’t with the right man back then. He came along in the summer of 2002. Instead I struggled with my Dad going through (his first) heart surgery, and I got broken up with on the night before my Dad’s surgery (“Sorry, I’ve got to do this now. Can’t really do it later if anything happens to your dad tomorrow. But you know, it’s me, it’s not you”). And as we all know the world change dramatically in the autumn of 2001.

Six years later than originally planned I finally got to go to America. If only for five days and only New York it was still an adventure. I might have thought about driving around New England – heck, I probably had the soundtrack ready – but visiting New York was a trip I hadn’t planned in my mind ages before. I don’t think I could have ever planned the holiday we ended up having. I was with the perfect man in a less then perfect shocking pink hotel room (the memory of which only makes me smile). Central Park was beyond what I had ever imagined. The weather was perfect. There was no soundtrack – just great books and laughing and buying “Little C” (the camera) and eating at great places and not so great places and experiencing the alarm going off constantly at the airport while waiting (in the worst weather ever) to go home. One of the great things about that holiday – that I could have never planned – was that I got my first job just weeks before going. After months of crying and feeling worthless, I arrived in New York with a smile on my face and the ability to just relax. And my boyfriend, who arrived from a conference that had gone really well, was able to do just the same.

Under no circumstances would I have been able to dream of that holiday 10-15 years ago when I sat in my teenage room and planned my life while waiting for the next episode of Beverly Hills 90210 to air. I try to tell myself to relax and take things one step at a time. Things aren’t always supposed to be like you dreamed they would. And though dreams are nice and offer great consolation in tough times, I think it quite often turns out that real life is better. Real life sometimes – sometimes often – suck, but the good moments are precious and worth so much more than any old dream.