Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
Five years ago, my life looked like it was sorted. I had bought a flat, I was working in a good job after finishing on my company’s graduate training programme - I looked like a textbook ‘yuppie’ (young upwardly mobile professional). I had flown to Amsterdam for a weekend, and made a couple of trips to Vienna.
But I was doing everything I thought I was supposed to be doing, not what I actually wanted to do. Not that I knew what I wanted to do, not really. And behind the scenes of that great life… I was falling out of the bottom of a huge restructure at work (that great job that I’d started? It ceased to exist 3 months later…) and I couldn’t even get an interview for anything else that I thought I was qualified for.
Having just committed to living in Edinburgh by buying a flat, I was having cold feet about living there. That was terrible timing and something I felt ashamed to admit, even to myself.
That trip to Amsterdam? It was in January, it was freezing cold and I didn’t particularly enjoy myself (other than being able to spend an afternoon in the Rijksmuseum with a university friend!), not that you’d know that from my triumphant Instagram photos.
I wasn’t having any success with online dating, and I didn’t really know why - it felt like there was something wrong with me, that I went on date after date and never felt any real connection. (I later figured that one out).
And now at 30… I’m living in a rented flat, I’ve gone back to uni. I’m still single but I’m more comfortable in my understanding of why that is. Having been on the ‘straight and narrow’ of making the ‘good decisions’ that I thought I ought to… I’m now adding some chaos into my life.
I realised that all the things I thought I ought to do were steps on a path that I’m not planning to follow. Buying a home and settling down makes total sense if you want to raise children. But I don’t want to have kids, so why do I need to do that?
By selling my home and moving back into a rented flat, I freed up my mortgage deposit (most of which had come from the sale of my grandad’s house - I’m aware of how incredibly lucky I am!), and that’s enabled me to go back to uni this year. The biggest cost of the Master’s degree is not the tuition fees - it’s the cost of living for a year. So at the end of this year, I’ll no longer have a chunk of cash that I could use towards buying a home - but I’ll have a Master’s degree and have spent a year trying out new things and exploring what might be next.
As a new adult, I spent a lot of time trying to keep my options open. Some of that was professionally - it was something I considered when making my academic choices and taking a ‘generalist’ job. Some of it was about my personal life - because I was planning to move to Scotland after university graduation, I intentionally didn’t make it a priority to get into a relationship.
By stepping away from the path I was on, and heading down this other road, the one that makes me happy, though, I have for the first time happily accepted that making a choice for my future means closing other doors.
That quote at the top of this piece is from the end of Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken, but I really want to share the opening.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler,
It is, I think, less famous - because we don’t want to accept that we can’t travel both roads in one lifetime. That, though, is something I’ve begun to do in recent years, having realised that trying to keep my options open had stopped me making progress down any of the roads at all. This year, even more than 2020, I’ve had a fair few shocks that have reminded me that life is unpredictable, short, and finite - and so I’ve been making the most of the opportunities I have available to have fun and get the most out of life.
I’m writing this on the way home from a weekend trip with Outdoor Adventure Girls, where I’ve been hiking on the Sussex coast (including walking up a really big hill!), dipping in the sea, and generally getting way out of my comfort zone. I don’t know if it’s something I’ll do again, but I am really happy that I’ve done it.
And that’s a feeling I’m aiming for more in my thirties.
Speak soon,
Lily
PS: I want to share
’s post which contributed to my thinking on this subject.
Go Lily! And from my perspective as a 54 year old you are fabulously young to be questioning your choices and thinking so consciously about this "one precious life" and how you want to be living it. A lot of us only start thinking about this when the menopause causes us to reconsider. Take care of yourself. Here's to your upcoming adventures x