Listening to my sat nav the other day, directing me along my journey stage by stage, I decided, on a whim, to take a detour en route, but couldn’t be bothered to tell her. She went quiet for a moment and then told me she was ‘recalculating’. As she quickly realigned herself to my new position and mapped out a new route to get to the same destination, even though I was now travelling in the opposite direction and she had to keep on making these adjustments, it occurred to me just how like the rest of life my sat nav system is.
Off we tootle, with a destination in mind of leaving this world, old and happy in the knowledge we’ve had a fulfilled life that includes a bunch of stuff; getting married to a soul mate, becoming head honcho of the soft cheese industry, having 2 lovely kids and a black labradoodle, bla bla bla. Yet en route to each, we take a diversion and suddenly, we have to ‘recalculate’. The ultimate goal is still the same but how we get there changes.
Ambition to become Head of Cheese in APAC? Child number one arrives and the juggling act of home, family and work means career goes ‘on hold’, lest we succumb to adult acne, Friday night red wine binges on the sofa and tearful breakdowns in the privacy of our GP’s office…..”recalculating”…
The marriage is suddenly blighted by an affair, doomed to fail and leaves wounds to become scars, single parenthood and years of unsuccessful dating……hang on… “recalculating”……. So, finding a soul mate? Romantic route recalculated to realistic, sensible route, looking then for a partner who is single, free of major debt and likes kids, becomes the name of the game, attraction and chemistry are the dusty sidetracks you must keep exploring, frequently hitting ‘no through road’ signs and leafy cul-de-sacs, having to back up and get back on the open road and again “recalculate”.
Some of the diversions on this journey can, however, be great ones. The ‘stop the wheel’ ones are generally the best – ones that carry a good degree of risk but the potential to be positively life changing.
For me, it has been decisions like having laser surgery to correct my poor sight – risky, scary and expensive but oh SO worth it! Twenty five years of short-sight and suddenly 20:20 vision, it’s hard to comprehend why I didn’t take the plunge sooner. The second big one was taking the enormous decision to leave the UK for good, uprooting my young son from his father, school, friends etc. to come to Sydney and start and new life here with a man I fell in love with at the tender age of 40.
You will possibly have made the connection and guessed that the life described above (paused career, failed marriage etc) was me and so this decision to divert the direction my life was going in, was one I really had to take when the opportunity landed in my lap.
And here again, another fork has appeared in the road. So once again, my personal sat nav is ‘recalculating’ as I get off the corporate 9-5 wheel on a new professional adventure in search of financial freedom and greater balance in my new Aussie family. The road is dotted with speed bumps, steep hills and hidden signs and no doubt has side tracks galore, waiting to be found and explored. And there’s no question this will be the last detour for me….. oh wait….”recalculating”….
