Career... envy?

Quite the melodramatic opening post, no?

I am job hunting at the moment which basically means I spend all day trying to find things to do other than writing job applications. God they're tedious. Anyway, I amused myself yesterday by LinkedIn stalking people I went to school/college/uni with. I made sure I wasn't logged into LinkedIn, don't worry.

Well! Doctors, vets, lawyers, bankers, a fashion designer (and not a struggling one either). People who work for McLaren, Christie's, the British Fashion Council. It left me feeling deflated, that's for sure. But after a little analysis I'm not sure why. I don't want to be a doctor, a lawyer or a banker. I have no strong feelings either way about vets or fashion designers but I'd be very bad at both of them. It follows that I wouldn't be much good working for the British Fashion Council and I don't quite know what I could offer to McLaren. Christie's is the only one I'd enjoy working for, and the school friend who did was an art expert. I wouldn't want to do art exactly, but antiques would be my right up my street.

Hell, even the blogs I follow are all written by people forging ahead in exciting careers, happily and productively self employed or contentedly raising a family.

So why the depression once my stalking session was over? The money? Well sure, I'd love to be earning the kind of salary that some of these people must be bringing home. I'm not naive though, I know the kind of sacrifices that have to be made to make it to those positions. I've worked closely with doctors for years and while they earn a heck of a lot of money, it's far from a walk in the park to get there, let alone on a day to day basis.

You know what it is? I envy my friends and acquaintances their certainty in what they want to do. I don't know only high flyers, plenty of people on my Facebook friends list have less glamorous jobs and some are housewives. The key thing is, they all seem to know what it is they want.

So, to the three of you that read my opening post, when did you figure out what you wanted to do with your life?

Well that's not quite how I thought it would be...

Coming home is a lonely experience. Typo, right? Should say 'lovely'? No, lonely is the right word.

We left the UK fewer than 6 years ago, for a new life Down Under. Those years were good years, in hindsight. We learnt a lot, we met some great people and we ate some pretty awesome food. There was always this thread of wanting to come back to the UK though, this pull of friends, and roots, and belonging. So, we took the plunge in December 2012 and moved back 'home'. Only it turns out that you really never can go home.