I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want!

A window of opportunity...

I sometimes think there aren’t many opportunities in our lives when we get to do exactly what we want without having any responsibilities or commitments towards anyone or anything else; I’m not talking about being selfish or narcissistic, but being able to fulfill a dream or desire that’s held deep within you….to follow a path that is uniquely yours.

Most of us start school at 4 or 5 years old and often attend a nursery or playschool of some sort before that; the education system in the UK doesn’t allow for much individuation, so we follow the national curriculum and try to find subjects that interest us and that might eventually inspire us towards a career choice that lights us up.

We leave school as young adults and although we might choose to have a gap year before starting university or work, we’re pretty much thrust into the world of work and responsibilities for the next 4 decades at least.

I read something in a Sunday paper last week where a 70 year woman had had a ‘makeover’; she commented that she was usually dressed in jeans as she spent a lot of her time ‘running around after grandchildren.’ I have a photo of my paternal grandma who died at 52 and she looked at least 20 years older than that, as did many women of her generation; I can’t imagine her ever running around after anybody!

So much of our lives are taken up by education, work and sometimes family life; our children have their children and suddenly, we’re thinking about what our later years might look like.

I have friends who are choosing to continue working in their 70’s, others who’ve retired, but are involved in volunteer work; some are very involved in their children’s and grandchildren’s lives, others less so….

So little of our time is free enough for us to be able to step back and think ‘what do I want from my life?’

When we chose to sell our house and move onto a narrow boat, the primary driver was to have an adventure; being continuous cruisers (we don’t have a home mooring) means that we move around all the time, sometimes without a destination in mind.

We have been moored in a marina over this winter as we’ve been on 2 holidays and we needed to leave the boat somewhere secure, but we don’t have a fixed plan of where we going when we leave in a couple of weeks time.

It’s quite an unusual lifestyle and not having a settled base wouldn’t be everyone’s idea of a good time, but having a choice of where to travel is one of the positive aspects of life on the cut.

There are over 2000+ miles of waterways in the UK (canals and rivers) and travelling at an average of 2-3mph means it’ll take a while to cover the whole network!

As we prepare to leave the marina, our thoughts are turning towards where we’d like to go and what we’d like to do and see this year; we also need to take into account time we want to spend with family and friends and how we can integrate the different aspects of our chosen lifestyle.

Living in a house lends itself towards a more structured lifestyle with more opportunity for a settled pattern in the days of each week, whereas living on a boat often means tentative plans change as locks break down, canals close for a while because of a fallen tree or even completely breach because of a landslide (look up the Bridgewater Canal).

It’s helpful to have a relaxed approach when planning a route as invariably, there will be something that forces us to change direction. We’ve often met boats approaching a junction and shouted ‘which way are you heading’ and they’ve shouted back ‘we’re not sure, we’ll see which way the nose wants to go when we get to the junction’; most continuous cruisers tend to have a very relaxed attitude to route planning!

The last few years have been the first time in our 67 and 72 year old lives where we don’t have to go anywhere in particular at any specific time; we can arrange to meet family and friends to suit their schedules and our life is freer than it’s ever been.

Having said that, it feels like a bit of a golden time as we’re alive (good start), together after 40 years and happy to be so and we’re both fit and well; we actively (no pun intended) take care of ourselves and hope to be able to maintain this itinerant lifestyle for a few years at least, but there are no guarantees.

We always said when we made the decision to radically change our lives that we’d rather do it and regret it, than not do it and regret not taking the plunge…not literally.

So, it feels as if we have a window of opportunity to live a life with less responsibility and we’ve no idea how long that window will last. We had no plans to do any of this before we did it and that surely is the beauty of life….who knows what’s ahead of us?

We want to stay closer to our family this year (we spent last year ‘up north’) so we’ll stay within an hours drive of Birmingham and plan to visit places we haven’t yet been on the boat. Some of those places include Stratford, Worcester, Stourport, Gloucester and wherever else appears interesting along the way.

If you had a year (or more) to do exactly what you wanted to do, what would it be? Life is short, time is precious and although many people wouldn’t want to do what we’re doing, we all have a dream that we’d love to fulfill before we die.

Maybe now’s the time to look for and plan for that window of opportunity, maybe the time IS now…..your dream awaits!