I got the idea for this blog a few days ago and I wasn’t sure how to start it off, how to introduce myself and say what this is all about. Then earlier today I was sat at a traffic light and beside the road was a pub with this sign posted on the wall and I thought that it summed up perfectly, why I am writing this blog!
I’m a British woman in my early 50’s (soon to be 53) and I am at a point in my life when I have spent a lot of time in self reflection wondering how on earth I arrived at where I am now. I feel like a failure in many areas of life and whilst there’s always a little bit of luck that affects how things go, for the most part I can look back and point to a multitude of bad decisions which have brought me to where I am now.
Sometimes I actually fantasize about having some kind of time machine where I could go back to a younger age but take with me all the wisdom that I have now and just start over making better decisions. But of course I can’t do that, none of us can.
Whilst I don’t want this to turn into a self indulgent pity party, I do need to talk (a lot!) about myself, my life and my failures. What I am hoping is that perhaps somebody reading something here might learn something from my failures that guides them towards a better place in their life. It might be too late for me to reach my dreams (or it might not, who knows) but if I can turn all the things I feel like I have got wrong into something positive, than that’s worth doing.
Most people who write anything that falls into the “self help” or “personal growth” category have first achieved some level of success at something. They then impart their learned wisdom to teach others how to follow in their footsteps and repeat their success. This blog is the opposite of that!
For some context, here are the things that are most important to me in life right now:
- Good health and wellbeing
- Love and other relationships
- Business and making a positive impact
- Adventure and experiences
- Money
This is just my list, what’s important to me personally. Yours may be very different. Anyway I guess these are the topics I will be talking about the most as that is what my experience is with. However, instead of having achieved success with any of these things, at this point in time I am at my lowest in most of those areas.
I’m at my heaviest weight and I my lowest fitness level, I am newly single, I am embarking on my 7th business venture but the one idea I have is one that my heart is not in and won’t really make any positive impact on the world, and as for money… I am surviving with a part time just-over-minimum-wage job and have a small amount of debt.
Don’t get me wrong – things could be FAR worse! My health is still relatively good, at least I am young enough and fit enough to go down the gym and start reversing the damage done by my neglect. I am newly single and really struggling with that right now but I do still hold out hope that I might one day meet the person who is truly right for me. Whilst I don’t have a great business idea or much money, at least I can live cheaply and only need to work part time to pay the bills so I have the time to work on a business venture, and to write this blog! I have some friends and a great family. I have a lot to be thankful for.
That’s probably enough of an introduction for now. At this point I don’t really have any idea how to structure things, what to talk about in what order, how to tell the stories, how to extract out some useful life lessons from it all. And I certainly don’t have any idea of when I’ll write – it will be as and when I feel inspired to do so, and not in a planned fashion.
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