A far cry from what I thought.

If you'd asked me when I was 16 years old where did I see myself being when I was in my thirties I would have probably have answered you that I would be in a hospital lab somewhere cutting up dead people...I wanted to be a pathologist. I certainly had no plans for motherhood, had got a place at college to do my A-Levels & was heavily involved in various orchestras and choirs in my spare time.

Only life takes you on the path IT chooses, and within the space of 2 years I had left college (without passing my A-Levels) got a job, left home, fallen pregnant with my first child & gotten married!

And whilst I wouldn't change anything I have done in my life, I now appreciate that there have been certain decisions taken which have proven not to have been the best (or maybe should have been delayed until I was more mature/better informed) and have seriously impacted on my ability to move on now.

It's not that it is too late to something about this, but I am struggling to see the way forwards because there are too many of the clouds of my past overhead. It's going to take a real trick to clear them enough for me to see. I have to deal with the difficulties in what ever way needed in order to continue participating in what's going on around me, my family, friends, work, everything. I refuse to be defined by the choices I made as a young person, and now need the decisions I take from this point on to count.

Once more it comes back to the title of this post. As a teenager I made a lot of assumptions that my life would be on track, smoothly flowing along and that I would know exactly where I was going. Everything I know now just tells you that life can be a far cry from your expectations, dreams, hopes and is requires consant (or at least periodic) rediscovery to keep you being true to yourself.