Everything I Never Wanted

Why is having a 'normal life' so bad?

In the car with my sixth form boyfriend, talking about our futures, he said “I never want to be one of those people living for the weekend”. He meant that he didn’t want a job he hated and have nothing to look forward to other than a weekend of drinking in the local pub. But he also meant that he wanted his work to be something that fulfilled, devoured and consumed him.

This comment lodged itself in the decision-making part of my brain. I too never wanted a “normal life”.

In ways conscious and not, this philosophy influenced the decisions I made about my work and life for fifteen years. I strove for a work I would love, be obsessed by and I let weekends slope by as I worked on that work. I became self-employed so that every element of my life was touched by work, whether that was the doing of it, the sharing of it, or the thinking of it.

My parents could never quite understand my life, which I saw as a good sign that mine was a life that was nothing like “normal”. But I never got so far as to wonder whether it was happy.

This month I started a full time job for the first time in seven years. That had been my focus for this year, to get back into employment. I dearly wanted stability, security, routine, community and contact. I wanted my feet planted in one place with one person and I wanted my work to support that. I wanted to have creativity in my life without it needing to pay the bills.

I wanted all of this before I realised: “shit, I want a normal life”.

As a child I wanted to be a farmer, or prime minister, or a world famous musician. There was a period of a few weeks where I traced the figures in the Next catalogue and drew clothes onto them because I wanted to be a fashion designer. As I grew older my aspirations moved into a corner office where I would be doing unspecified but high status Very Important Work.

When I imagined my future it had never been in a provincial town turning up to work and checking out in the evening, cooking dinner every night, having a gym schedule, talking TV shows in the office and then going home to watch those TV shows at night, making weekend plans. It was never the adult lives that I grew up around, ones of responsibility and routine and a job that was a job and not an entire vocation.

What was so bad about a normal life? Perhaps because I was an only child whose parents were explicit about me having a better life than they did. Perhaps because I drank my own kool-aid. Perhaps it was growing up in an economic boom where capitalistic success was lauded. Perhaps it was a need to prove myself, to no one and everyone in particular.

None of which actually answers that question, because there isn’t anything inherently bad in a normal life. It just meant, to me, that it would not be obvious that I was special. I would not be different. And so I set out on highly ambitious paths that took me to some interesting places, none of which I would call ‘contentment’.

I had always ignored the benefits that came with this kind of normality: knowing how much money will regularly land in your bank account, fully switching off from work, dedicated time for passion pursuits, knowing where you’ll be and when, a long range rhythm to life with fewer adrenal spikes.

“Romanticise your life” is the latest social media clarion call. It feels a lot like the Instagram ‘slow living’ boom that I entered into eight years ago, now rebranded for the TikTok generation. But what then, in a pre-Brexit pre-Trump world, felt like a deliberate rejection of hustle/Girl Boss culture feels a little different now.

In the context of an economic landscape where property ownership and other traditional safety nets of adulthood move further out of grasp, ‘romanticising your life’ feels like something that gives you the illusion of choice. The illusion of choosing to really appreciate your nice little coffee on a walk, when the reality is that it’s the only kind of luxury you can afford. It feels like forcing yourself to be ok with your lot, regardless of whether you actually are.

I wonder whether this is what I’m doing, in ‘choosing’ this life change that is arguably more a necessity than a choice. Am I giving myself the illusion of making a positive change when really it’s my only option? It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve convinced myself I want something just because it’s the easiest thing to want.

I don’t think I have the answer to this question because I am still too close to it. I am too much in the excitement of novelty and possibility, too full with my ideas of what it will be like without any real experience. Perhaps I am sleepwalking into another season of life I’ll want to escape from, yet to find the life I want to escape into.

Mostly though, I don’t think this is the right question. When we desire change in our life, we set about it in terms of absolutes: the things we absolutely do and don’t want, the total clarity, the ‘this or nothing, for ever and ever’. It’s a desire for certainty, for knowing. We forget how fluid life is, and how it exists not in one point or the other, but between them.

I won’t enjoy waking up every morning to go to an office and at times I will feel stifled by routine. I will enjoy coming home and having an evening to do as I want with, not one that has to make me money so I can pay rent. I won’t enjoy the normal life, and also, I will enjoy it.

I get to choose how I will experience this life, just as we all do. I get to choose whether I resent the parts I don’t like and contrive ways to escape, or I get to choose whether I embrace my creative free time and, dare I say romanticise, the financial opportunities it affords.

Ultimately, there is no such thing as a normal life or a special life determined by the external signifiers and contexts of work. There is only the life you choose to live - and maybe that’s romanticising your life.