Have You Ever Reinvented Your Own Life

[nailit]

Have you ever decided to completley overhaul your life and made major life changing decisions?
Just in need of a few inspiring real life stories at the moment.
TIA for any replies guys.

[sunny-dave]

Yes - I bailed out of an over-stressed, over-paid, IT job with a huge company - the monetary rewards just weren't worth the life-destroying daily grind.

I spent a couple of years doing some extensive building work on my house to get me fit and healthy, after too many years of pen pushing.

Then I answered an advert for a dogsbody with a local charity (being paid peanuts, or actually less than than that) - I found a whole new life working with people who actually cared about what they were doing.

That eventually led to a whole new career doing (I think) really useful stuff around the field of Alzheimer's and Dementia - I wound up running all the dementia training for my local county council.

I often kept thinking "how did that happen" ... but I'm glad it did.

[sunny-dave]

... and ...

" hello nailit - good to see you around "

dave

[boxtops]

Yes, I left a stultifying relationship and moved to a different part of the country, and started again.

[nailit]

thanks dave and boxy. Dave, Its good to be around after all the cr@p earlier this year believe me...

[grasscarp]

No nailit. In my head I can visualise living a completely different way, but once you are married, in a joint owned house with children and grandchildren nearby it is kind of impossible to reinvent yourself and you have to carry on as you are.

[mrs_overall]

Yes, numerous times
I started out in marine biology and have had lots of changes of directions, including diving instructor, writer, embalmer, trainer in industry and some others (clean and legal) I don't want to mention on here.
I recently obtained a teaching qualification.
I have lived in various parts of this country and abroad.
I love a change and I have a low boredom threshold

[daffy654]

I escaped a violent relationship whilst pregnant with my second child and moved 200 miles away with just my daughter, her pram and a bag of clothes. We started all over on our own away from the ex. It was difficult but much better than the daily beatings I was getting before. :)

[grasscarp]

Well done Daffy. That must have taken a lot of courage.

[mrs_overall]

Good for you daffy xx

[nailit]

very inspiring and very helpful, thanks

[lady-janine]

well done daffy. i did the same with two young children. it was difficult and hard but we got through it.

i've also had a couple of career changes and went to uni as a mature student but nothing as interesting as mrs overstretched.

[jomifl]

We left the south coast of UK to live in France. Without going into details we are better off socially and financially and are able to indulge our interests more fully and have a much larger group of more interesting friends than we had in the UK.

[grasscarp]

zut alors jomifl. Are we English so uninteresting!

[atalanta]

Every time I moved house or changed jobs. I have lived at about thirty different addresses, and have had jobs from being a cleaner in a holiday camp to running a major part of an Oxbridge college. I must have reinvented myself at least a dozen times.

[nailit]

Thanks for replies guys. Any more stories would be welcome though I wont be able to view them until I get the use of a computer again (not on internet and have to rely on public computers)
Thanks

[Old_Geezer]

FWIW Left a job to go to Uni as a so called mature student at a time when it was the exception to go rather than the expectation. Left at the end to get a job with a half decent pay cheque and something interesting to get involved with. One of my better moves in life.

[David H]

My own personal experience is virtually any major plans I had were diverted by external life, possibly the only exception was when I left a job as the stress level was too high and I was about to finish a new course opening up a different career.

To explain more details, half our lives depend on other people's decisions. We can choose a new career, partner or other things, but other people do the interviews, exam marking and accepting offers of dates etc. You can move house but your problems follow you wherever you go, and they need fixing first before you move for a change of life or they will still dominate your life. Then when I've got jobs I never had an idea how long they'd last, you can shift everything for a new one and get made redundant after a week as I did, and when I left the one I mentioned it took me 18 months in the end to find a new one doing something I did before I even left school as I had no other offers. My whole life, including choice of courses has almost been all by circumstances and regardless of my own plans, and if I thought there had been ways to keep it more on track I'd use them now but still not aware of any. But around half the situations life forced me into were little better or worse than what I'd originally picked, once course was out of my depth and guided by them to one that wasn't, and another was simply too demanding as evening classes and had to switch to another totally based on the hours and cost and location. It wasn't at the level I wanted originally but in a subject far more suited to my original career so pretty much broke even on that one and only ended up in my first choice by chance and not planning.

[piggynose]

I've reinvented myself 4 times. I'm now getting itchy feet, and need a new challenge, as i'm now in a kind of rut.

[joko]

it depends what you mean by reinvent ...

to some it means totally start again from scratch - new home in another town, new friends, new job, new everything

to others it means just a different job, or splitting with a partner.
i wouldn't call that reinventing yourself though, that's just a normal change that everyone does from time to time.

as soon as you establish that its not just a natural 'grass is greener' type longing, and that its a change that you actually need, then you will be able to do it.

it doesn't have to be a dramatic overnight change either - you can do it in stages - change one thing at a time - that us usually easier for people.