A Life less ordinary…

I work a fair amount (I think) and I’m away from home every so often and don’t get to see my wife nearly enough.

Same for me, and probably 99% of everyone here.

For me work is a means to an end. I actually enjoy my job on occasions, but there’s no passion there. I work because I earn money which allows me to pay my mortgage and bills and take holidays to other parts of the world that are exciting to me.

Re this; This is how I’ve being trying to change, because I have found it hard to accept that my career (read job) although very successful, fast paced and full of promotion and reward in my 20’s & early to mid 30’s, has just become tediously boring with the off patch of excitement thereafter. Again, I probably need to just accept that whilst showing enough willing and fervour for any pay rises to be award, or not to be considered in the firing line – because it pays the bills and allows me the family/house/bikes etc.

That’s the hope anyway. I don’t think there is a life less ordinary. I think the majority of us have the same ties, whether it be paying a mortgage, rent, fuel, food etc. Not many people life a self-sustaining lifestyle anymore and happiness is normally found in the simpler things whilst still living in a modern world.

Well, indeed, and in my case I need to take greater satisfaction from the things around me than I do now.

The other night I wandered back up to my old uni (they were having an open day thing) and I sat in on a psychology lecture. They were debating about what an emotion is and how easy/viable it is to try to change other people’s emotions i.e. if you see a friend looking upset, is it better to help them or should you leave them to it?
Near the end a member of the audience asked one of the speakers if it is scientifically proven that money makes people happier, and the scientist person said that it was, but only to a point. Obviously everyone needs enough money to be happy, but by doing a cross-section of all the households in an area they discovered that after a certain point it levels off and that having huge amounts of extra cash makes no difference. She also said that wealth-related unhappiness came not from how much stuff you had as such, but from comparing how much stuff you had to your peers, meaning that even millionaires become unhappy when they compare themselves to billionaires.

That – exacerbated by the media. Upgrade your house? Buy to let? £20k for a basic family car – more if you need a lifetyle 4×4?

No wonder there is so much unhappiness when we are letting ourselves by suckered into living a “dream” foisted on us by people getting paid for the privilege.

and that having huge amounts of extra cash makes no difference. She also said that wealth-related unhappiness came not from how much stuff you had as such, but from comparing how much stuff you had to your peers, meaning that even millionaires become unhappy when they compare themselves to billionaires

Doesn’t this summarise to realising your fantasy’s – where most people, once they do so, become compacent and bored with the object of their fantasy, and they create a new fantasy etc etc….?

STOP!!!!!

passiflora86 » She also said that wealth-related unhappiness came not from how much stuff you had as such, but from comparing how much stuff you had to your peers,

Just out of interest, I know a guy from work who always seems happy in a way demonstrated by he never asks of care about your achievements / objects in a “I wish” kinda fashion. When I rode with him one he gave me a tour of his house. No more than a standard town house, it was a decent place, with good decor, Samsung TV with Sky, and a few pictures and furnished “just enough” for two, with a diesel mondeo in the drive.

He’s very well paid, but a quiet get on with it type, and when I asked him why he didn’t have more stuff, and he said “what for?”

@fevouredimage, good on you for taking a positive step, time now to regroup and decide what next. I cannot know your exact situation but if I were in your shoes I would suggest you find something you enjoy doing, you need to stay active mentally, indeed perhaps even become active and engaged mentally in a way you haven’t done with work before.

To OP I’d suggest making a list of some options, they can be sensible or wild. Talk this through with some people. If you want some inspiration try reading some auto-biographies of people you find interesting or inspirational, try reading some travel books.

I’m in the process of finalising a list of 50 things to do in/around my 50th year, some major some modest. We’ve (3 mates in same situation) already made a start, it’s very empowering to work on creating the list and then just doing stuff, things I’ve not got round to doing for literally decades.

Kryton57 – Member

passiflora86 » She also said that wealth-related unhappiness came not from how much stuff you had as such, but from comparing how much stuff you had to your peers,

Just out of interest, I know a guy from work who always seems happy in a way demonstrated by he never asks of care about your achievements / objects in a “I wish” kinda fashion. When I rode with him one he gave me a tour of his house. No more than a standard town house, it was a decent place, with good decor, Samsung TV with Sky, and a few pictures and furnished “just enough” for two, with a diesel mondeo in the drive.

He’s very well paid, but a quiet get on with it type, and when I asked him why he didn’t have more stuff, and he said “what for?”

He sounds like a sensible bloke.

I do have “stuff”, for which I’m grateful, but most of it was cheap/second-hand and gets used, to a point beyond which I can’t repair it…

As the owner of a diesel Mondeo I don’t believe that driving an Audi A6, BMW 5-series or X5 would make me any happier …just lighter in the wallet. I doubt that my neighbours or friends would care either, although even if they did, I wouldn’t care.

@fevouredimage, good on you for taking a positive step, time now to regroup and decide what next. I cannot know your exact situation but if I were in your shoes I would suggest you find something you enjoy doing, you need to stay active mentally, indeed perhaps even become active and engaged mentally in a way you haven’t done with work before.

Absolutely. I have a few ideas. I certainly don’t intend to sit at home watching the box all day. God forbid!!

But without the pressure of needing to obtain a certain income to maintain a certain lifestyle it means I can think more creatively. As someone who has been building bikes (purely for pleasure) since I was 15 I thought I might purchase old tired single speed bikes and tidy/repair them and sell them on for a bit of profit. SS speed not my scene really but they are popular and cheap to buy/simple to fix and make pretty so it’s a way to make a few quid.

I’ve never really utilised my degree in Furniture Design and Craftmanship so that is also something I am going to pursue.

These were things I’d never even humoured the idea of doing because I was too preoccupied trying to maintain a certain lifestyle, but now I have time and the desire to pursue things that I really enjoy.

We had a complete lifestyle change about 18 months ago in order to move to the west country to be closer to family and to give our little boy the type of upbringing we were both lucky to have enjoyed – we both gave up our jobs in the south east and sold up in a matter of weeks – my wife took redundancy and retrained as a teacher. I left a well paid IT systems job in London to work for a small, family owned company. Still doing IT but much more varied than what I did before, and challenging as well since I’ve had to learn a lot of it from scratch.

In parallel with that I’ve signed up as a retained firefighter at the ripe old age of 40 and am progressing through the training at the moment (passed my basic skills last week). Feels great to have a really practical, community focussed foil to the more cerebral stuff I do at work, and I love the camaraderie and banter around the station.

We’ve taken about a 50% hit on our household income and if I’m honest we’re as busy as ever but are both really engaged in the local community in a way that we never were previously – we actually feel like we live here rather than just exist. We spend far less than we did because a lot of what we were paying out was for crappy stuff which we really didn’t need.

If you’d told me 2 years ago that we’d have done all this I’d have laughed in your face. It has been a massive change for us all but we really couldn’t be happier.

Have a think about stuff you could do which is different to your day job but which may well complement it (volunteer work etc?) – if there are things you want to do, or changes you want to make to your life, then go for it. You’re a long time dead.

…but are both really engaged in the local community in a way that we never were previously – we actually feel like we live here rather than just exist.

That’s something that I’ve been thinking about recently. Good effort for the training as a firefighter.

I started to think the other day perhaps I should make “paying off the mortgage early” a focussed project,

Just sold our place, we’re downsizing. Plan is to clear the mortgage by the time we’re 55 – both currently 44.
Alternatively, it gives MrsMM the scope to only do say, 4 days…. MrsMM being the breadwinner as my humble little business keeps on just keeping it’s head above water.
At 55 MrsMM will also be able to take her pension, if she wants to… We’re also very lucky in that we live in a great community and are quite active within it, though I do occasionally wonder if those commitments are too much…