I have an old friend who I've known since we were teenagers. Let's call her Nell, and let's say this post is me thinking aloud.
Nell studied English at university, a different one to me, and in the 40 years since then has had a number of occupations including a period managing a yoga and meditation retreat centre in the countryside. What she hasn't had is anything which looks like a conventional career, because her main objective has been to have enough to fund her simple lifestyle, in which Chi Gong, meditation and sustainability play enormous parts. She and her partner have spent long periods abroad in meditation centres and they live in a beautifully converted van.
Her life has been something like the one I used to imagine for myself. I hadn't intended to pursue a corporate career, but after graduation I had to do something and by accident found myself working for a large organisation where I stayed for nearly 4 decades, rising completely unintentionally to middle-management. In the first few years, before I was married, I used to see Nell a lot, stay with her and her partner and go to music festivals, cook enormous curries, walk in the woods.
In the first couple of years of corporate life I thought that somehow my lifestyle could still be a little alternative, vegetarian, pursuing happiness rather than just money. I imagined leaving the big company and working in a second hand bookshop or perhaps for a charity. I thought when I could afford to buy my own place, it would be a small terraced house in the part of town where unconventional people tend to gather, one of those bohemian areas where the cafe on the corner is vegan, there are independent shops, people have parties where the guests bring instruments to play and the bookshop on the other corner hosts poetry readings. What I've had, and this is because of choices I didn't make consciously, was a conventional work and family life.
This is certainly not a bad thing. For one, I've been able to retire early and I have no need to work for money again. I'm available for family and can spend lots of time with them. But aspects of that other life, the one I haven't had, call to me. I imagine this is quite normal in middle age, when there are fewer years left than the number you've already had.
Email: kdan01 [at] posteo [dot] net