Wanted: Escape From The Hamster Wheel

It’s not that it’s a failure, per se. I’m not even bitter. It’s just that things haven’t panned out as I imagined. If I’d ever made it into a year book, the caption by my picture would probably have said ‘Most Likely To Succeed’ or at least ‘Most Likely To Die Trying’.

But instead, I woke up one morning and found out that life today would be exactly like life yesterday, and life tomorrow the same too. Not in a day-to-day way, actually. I mean, today we may do crafts, tomorrow we may go out, but at the heart of the matter, every day has one objective: Make it through. Scrape the Pennies together. Survive. Okay, that’s three, but they’re on the same theme.

Biding my time has never been my thing. There’s so much to do in this world and with this life, but living from paycheck to paycheck, juggling which bills will get paid each month because there simply isn’t enough money around to pay them all? Well, that’s not where I hoped to be in life.

And it’s not just me. I was reading up recently about how many families with children there are in the UK and I found that the number of families who have moved in with other families (concealed families, they’re called) has dramatically risen over the last few years because people can’t afford to stay on their own any more.

Thank God we’re not there yet – I don’t even know who we’d stay with! But when did life become such a hamster wheel? There must be more. Teachers are striking. ‘Poverty Pay’ is an actual term used in the news. Apparently one in five in the UK live under the poverty line. And sure, there’s poverty and then there’s POVERTY. We’re not homeless with our children playing in the dirt outside ramshackle huts. I know that. But it’s all about perspective.

Maybe part of this ‘gentle stroll to granola’ is going to become about living different to the norm, out of the hamster wheel, and different to what’s deemed “right”. I can feel the North Wind blowing for me. It’s time to pull up anchor and see what’s still out there.