Dream Life

So lately I've been thinking about how I wish my life was, the big aspirational lifestyle that I've been striving towards one step forward and two steps back since I 'offically became an adult' a good few years ago. I dreamt that I'd be married before I had children and that marriage would have happened inside a big white wedding with tear soaked family members and well-wishers. I thought I'd have a mortgage and a career or at least an aga by now but I don't. I have a two and a half bedroom end of terraced house with rent that I struggle to find most months. I have a career niche that I'm banging my head against the wall carving myself as I have no real experience or expertise to offer and no university degree to back up my claims that I am a fast learner and an achiever. I have no savings, my simple pleasures come from Boots or the local florist and cooking fresh food is considered a treat.

To stop me feeling depressed I often think about the perfect life and while it is far away and may never be fully fulfilled it's something to cling on to in times of despair and fleeting hope.

My perfect home would be a six bedroom detached house with flowers in window boxes and a white wooden gate lined with blooming bushes. There'd be a porch swing and six bedrooms - enough for an office, a games room and a guest bedroom - four bathrooms, a slipper tub and, of course, a bi-weekly cleaner. It would be light and airy with texture and colour in textiles with a view overlooking land on one side and a river on the other. We would have a piano, a guitar, a double bass and our dogs with close routes to walk them nearby (not the musical instruments, you understand). This would be located somewhere quite rural with land large enough to keep two horses and chickens but close enough to a city to feel like home and nowhere near a hill with local fresh produce merchants and a well stocked shop.

I'd be a full-time writer and my husband would own his own business, we'd be close to our family and host dinner parties monthly and never really have to worry about money. I have never wanted to be rich but I have dreamed of not having to worry about money and not thinking twice about running two cars (one of which should be a vintage Volkswagen Beetle) or booking one holiday a year. I'd love to not have to answer to a landlord or the bank for a mortgage; to own a house outright and never have to think twice about flicking the central heating on during an unseasonably chilly morning. There'd be fresh flowers in the house every week, an open fire in the lounge and the scent of sweet treats baking (because in my dream life I'd be a master baker).

I keep thinking about this and knowing it won't happen or at least not all of it. If one day I become a writer, my husband owns his own business and we do get the home of our dreams it will never knit our families together and that's something I live with but my God I want to see the white voiles at the windows blow in the breeze carried by the river and to have my morning coffee sat on a bistro set on a patio where the background noise doesn't consist of early morning lorries roaring down a main road.

What's your dream life? Is there something you'd love that you know is out of reach for now, or ever? I'd love to know.