Today is the First Day of the Rest of My Life

So today at work Stacy, the font of all wisdom, said something so profound that it made me stand back and take stock of my life. She said - and this is so stark that it just might shock you - that every woman deserves to get what she wants. Smacked in the gob I was, when the weight of that statement hit me. I have fallen into the trap that so many of us fall into.

When I was a girl I dreamt of what my life would be like, and the picture in my mind was markedly different from what has actually come to pass. I don't recall fantasizing about renting a tiny, overpriced flat because buying one is out of the question, or having debt equivalent to my annual income, or having an arse the size of a small country. I don't recall promising that I'd do anything, ANYTHING, if I could just be childless and alone at the age of forty. And I'm pretty damned certain that I didn't go to university to find a job that, although I'm grateful to have it, hardly nourishes my soul and pays just enough that I need a second one. I envisioned my life entirely differently. I wanted the witty, handsome husband, the children (although after living in a fairly quiet, reasonably clean and completely bogey-free environment for years now, I am quite willing to let that one go), the mortgage on the cute little house, the job, writing from the warm, well-appointed den of the aforementioned cute little house. I wanted to have enough money to have friends over for dinners and go out once a week. I wanted to have a savings account with actual savings in it. I wanted to spend every day celebrating my contentment.

Now, I know that I have many things to be grateful for. People often say that we should be grateful for what we have, and I get that. I understand that if you have a roof over your head and your health that you have a whole lot more than many people have. Relative to people in war-torn countries, or people living in cardboard boxes or mud huts, or people trying to get through just one more day of chemotherapy, I have it easy. And I genuinely try not to take those things for granted. But just because I am better off than some people doesn't mean that I have to stagnate. Just because I am better off than some other people doesn't mean that I can't have everything I want for my life, does it?

I want to make a living as a writer. I want to have a little place to call my own. I want to be debt-free with enough money in the bank that I don't go into gastric distress every time a bill comes through the mail slot. And today, thanks to Stacy's words of wisdom, I realised that, with planning, diligence and courage, I can have the things I want. The fact that those words of wisdom, I found out later, came not from Stacy, but from a program she saw on the telly last week is utterly beside the point.