What do I want to be???

I am an incredibly lucky person: I have a family who love me and would get on a plane at a moments notice if I needed them to. I have a husband who adores me, though not as much as I adore him. I have a dog, a home, and a bevy of friends who I love to spend time with. Yet I can’t help feeling that I am disappointing. Whereas DH has been planning to be a lawyer since he was in his teens, and let me just tell you that he is a great lawyer, I am still trying to work out what I want to be.

When I was eight, I was determined to be a Missionary Doctor. There’s really nothing I can say about that. I also wanted to be an architect, until I only got a C in my design GCSE (more down to me taking a violent dislike to the teacher than being rubbish at Design.) My degree subject- Modern European Studies (that’s Economics, Politics and French to those of you who are interested)- was chosen specifically so that I could follow my parents into the Foreign Office. Then they split up and my life fell apart. And I fell into nannying. For which I have not a single qualification, save a love of children, a firm belief in manners, rules and boundaries, and an inate skill as it turned out. Maternity nursing was an easy step to take from there- and the buzz of helping a new mum get on in the world with her new baby is one that really can’t be beaten. But it’s hardly a job that allows you to have a life. Eleven years of childcare later, and with my father still waiting for me to get a ‘proper job’, I found myself wondering what I should do next.

The problem is that I have never really excelled at anything. I’m good at lots of things, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not great. So there has never been a career path that has stood out, the yellow brick road amongst all the tarmac ones. It’s a lot to do , no doubt, with my burning desire to be a wife and a mother. In this respect, I was light-years ahead of most of my friends, although they are starting to catch on to my way of thinking now they are approaching their thirties. Now that the first title has been acquired and the second is proving harder to come by, I want to do something. I want to contribute, in however small a part, to funding our lifestyle, I want to occupy my mind with something other than my desperate craving for children, and I suppose most of all, I would like those people who support me as friends and family to be proud of me and what I do. Now that I am home-based, I am trying out jobs that work in tandem with WH, DH, the Money Pit and A Helping Hand. Not much then….

A Helping Hand- born out of a need to find something to do that meant I could work from home and thus look after the dog- is going well. It combines a lot of the things I am good at- research, organisation, and a desire to help in whatever capacity is required. It provides variety and a chance to wear a suit and pretend I am a member of the rat race, albeit one who gets into London at ten and leaves aby four to avoid travelling in the rush hour with a dog. But as it’s not full-time, there are blank windows in my day, after all the cooking and cleaning and organising, when I could be doing something else.

Dogsitting has come and gone. In principle it seemed like a great idea, since I have a dog, and walk her three times a day anyway. The reality meant that WH and Guest Dog had to be seperated for the first five days as GD kept trying to hump WH, WH kept peeing on the floor in protest and I couldn’t bring them both to work, as I can with WH. Plus, quite frankly, the money sucks. So bye-bye dogsitting. You can almost hear the sighs from here- another of Domestic Godd-esque’s money-making schemes gone awry.

Writing still happens, but in reality I’m not going to get a six-figure three-book deal as an unknown unpublished author without an unprecedented amount of luck. And the novel is still a long way from being completed. As is the childcare book. So that’s on a bit of a slow burn.

Which currently leaves sewing. I have mentioned my love of my sewing machine before. The last few weeks of house-selling have meant that it had to be tidied away, but a job lot of babies being born got me to dig it out again, to whip up little somethings for the little newborns. And I’m rather good at it. So good that DH thinks I could make a business out of it. I’ve been buying up swathes of fabric on ebay to make baby gifts which I can whip them up quite easily in the quieter periods of the week. Who knows, maybe this idea will be a winner! Then maybe I will feel that I am, finally, good at something, and not a disappointment.