Which road?

[side_show]

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost (1874–1963)
 
 
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, 
And sorry I could not travel both 
And be one traveler, long I stood 
And looked down one as far as I could 
To where it bent in the undergrowth;         
 
Then took the other, as just as fair, 
And having perhaps the better claim, 
Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 
Though as for that the passing there 
Had worn them really about the same,         
 
And both that morning equally lay 
In leaves no step had trodden black. 
Oh, I kept the first for another day! 
Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 
I doubted if I should ever come back.         
 
I shall be telling this with a sigh 
Somewhere ages and ages hence: 
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— 
I took the one less traveled by, 
And that has made all the difference.

So what road are you on? Have you taken one path, then switched to another? Or are you pulled along by fate, or serving someone else's needs these days?

I ask because I'm at the crossroads in my own life and I'm eyeing up the well-trodden path after years on the road less travelled.  It might just be the tick, tick, tick of the biological clock I thought did not exist until it started rattling inside me.  I've been the one who tried anything, and who did the crazy things, took the risks and grasped glory and defeat.  Maybe I'm getting old, maybe I'm getting tired, maybe I just need a short break, but suddenly a house, a family in suburbia and all the things I never wanted are starting to look surprisingly attractive.  Yet at the same time, travel around the world, artistic exploration and adventure as a whole are incredibly attractive. 

[Asherdan]

Right about now you can pretty much split my adult years neatly in half. The first half, I was a wild man. Seriously, truly and in every sense of the word.

The second half I settled down, to an extent, on the more commonly traveled marriage, home and family road.

Both have been good. Two things that have made the second half even better, though. First, I married well. Spouse is much the same in experience and temperament as me. Second, and reliant on the first, is that even with the obligations (and mindful of the reward of same) of the 'family track' having partnered with a fellow traveler still leads to some of those less traveled paths getting explored.

Sure, it's never a smooth and easy balancing act, and allowances of want must always be made in favour of home and family. But the tempering of the two needs has let me be content.

[littlefallsmets]

I think I've been kind of stumbling slipshod in the dark from one to the other, if we'll go with that metaphor.

Not many people from rural Upstate New York move to a large city, let alone a west coast city, and make it stick.

However I am also slowly burning myself out at a mildly-humiliating low-skill-labour dayjob because it is what allows me to most help my brother with the disabilities associated with his seizure disorder and the pills he needs to keep it in check. So that probably goes in the other column.

I have probably taken a few more Big Swings than most people, really, but when I have swung and missed, it has taken me much longer to recover than most people who take those Big Swings. If that makes any sense.

Some people can't try at all, go strictly on momentum and count down their life like a game clock.

Some people can just fail, dust themselves off and try again near-immediately.

I'm neither of these types, at least not wholly. I can get on the path less taken but when I stumble there, I fall into a pathetic heap for a while before walking again.

[jaydub]

I'm sort of tramping around in the bushes next to the better-traveled path, occasionally squatting down to watch a bug, then getting up to sprint through the weeds.  I spent my childhood bouncing between continents, had a pretty typical HS period, went to a State university because of my ..unorthodox.. learning style and took 6 1/2 years to get a Molecular Biology degree and 57 semester units of PE (majority of those in Lacrosse and Scuba).  Got out, made T-shirts, suffered paralyzing panic attacks, apprenticed and bluffed my way into Actual Science work, tricked a girl into marrying me.  Spent 5 years playing then made a baby, earned a couple black belts, made another baby 7 years after the first, got back into lacrosse and here we are.  I earn a princely (well...an Earl-y) sum, but don't own a house or more than one car.  Lots of vacations, a fat check going into retirement savings, and poor early-years money management combined with a jaundiced view of housing in the SF Bay Area keep me from shackling to a mortgage.

[pmcd9]

I never saw the path, either one of them.

[wombat]

Paul beat me to it - I was going to say "Path? What path?"

Also I was going to say, for a long time I did the conventional thing, kept going to school and then did the thing school had trained me for, but then all hell broke loose.

But I realized, that is totally a lie. Yeah, I decided in high school that I wanted to do theoretical linguistics. But (with my unerring instinct for the things that there's no market for) I also wanted to study early music. And I ended up at a college where I couldn't do either properly, and I dropped out for a while, and I went back to a different college intending to go straight on to grad school, but actually worked for a while in between... Obviously the ten years where I had the same job teaching at the university were the aberration, and no one who'd been paying attention should have expected that to last.

I have always been a jack of all no-market-for-it trades and master of none.

[jay-ell]

I've chosen the well-traveled path, but I'm traveling it on a unicycle, playing a violin.

Which is to say: Just because you're going in the same general direction as everyone else doesn't mean you have to get there the same way.

[AugustWest]

I've chosen the well-traveled path, but I'm traveling it on a unicycle, playing a violin.

Which is to say: Just because you're going in the same general direction as everyone else doesn't mean you have to get there the same way.

THIS

I think "two roads" thing is kind of a false dichotomy.  Life has more to do with how you walk down the path you're on than which path you choose.

[Carlos del Vaca]

Pretty much what AW said.  I am quite on the well-traveled path, methinks, but I'm happy with it, so it's all good.

I am, however, more obsessed with the "Sliding Doors" notion of alternate realities, and small choices making big differences.  The most obvious such choice, I think (for modern yuppie types like me, anyway) is where you went to college.  If I could go it back and do it differently, I might, not because I regret anything from this go-round, but just to see how things would turn out if I'd gone to Brown, Penn, Swarthmore, fill in the blank.  Would I have found a college sweetheart and gotten married sooner?  Ended up in some miracle job right out of college?  Fallen in with a bad crowd, done drugs, and failed out? 

For the most part I expect things would have turned out similar, but one never knows.

[Asherdan]

Neat. I've had that same wonder because it came down to Virginia, Brown and UoPacific being educationally equal for my goals and I chose to stay West Coast.

[jay-ell]

Going to a small, local, all-girl college was absolutely the most important decision I have ever made.

[side_show]

THIS

I think "two roads" thing is kind of a false dichotomy.  Life has more to do with how you walk down the path you're on than which path you choose.

I don't know about that.  I honestly believe choosing to have a child will most definitly close some doors to me.  I simply will not have the freedom of no financial responsibilty if I choose to have a child.  I've never cared about money, comfort or stablilty, but if I have a child, I know I will love that child and want to provide him or her at least the latter two, and ideally a sufficient portion of the first.  Hmmmm.... it's a head scratcher.

[greenkoolayd]

having a child might create different opportunities.  lts like a choose-your-own-adventure.  the ones that keep thier fingers in the pages, so they can go back if they dont like the outcome, tend to get less out of the story.  if you commit to X decision, a, b, k, and c arent available anymore, but there will be z, y, f, and L.

[AugustWest]

I don't know about that.  I honestly believe choosing to have a child will most definitly close some doors to me.  I simply will not have the freedom of no financial responsibilty if I choose to have a child.  I've never cared about money, comfort or stablilty, but if I have a child, I know I will love that child and want to provide him or her at least the latter two, and ideally a sufficient portion of the first.  Hmmmm.... it's a head scratcher.

Oh absolutely.  I'm not saying that your choices don't make a difference in the circumstances of your life.  My point is more like whatever (within reason) the circumstances in your life do you choose to approach things in a creative, positive way.  Which obviously is not even close to a problem for you.

My Dad always says "Attitude is everything" and I believe that.  I think the most important decision we can make is deciding to be happy and relatively sane.  Once you do that, most other stuff is transitory.

None of this is much help in making a decision, though.

[jay-ell]

I don't know about that.  I honestly believe choosing to have a child will most definitly close some doors to me.  I simply will not have the freedom of no financial responsibilty if I choose to have a child.  I've never cared about money, comfort or stablilty, but if I have a child, I know I will love that child and want to provide him or her at least the latter two, and ideally a sufficient portion of the first.  Hmmmm.... it's a head scratcher.

The thing about having kids is that they change everything, especially what you value in life.

Any parent will tell you that having a baby means you lose freedom. What most don't tell you is that, when it comes right down to it, you don't care.

Except for those that do -- some people have babies without being prepared for the responsibility that comes with it (whether they're 14 or 41), and these people do bemoan losing their relatively carefree existence. But being ready for a child is a lot like being insane: if you're wondering whether you are, you're probably OK.

Additionally, as Jaydub will no doubt tell you, there's no reason kids should keep you from being a world traveler, especially before they reach school age. Traveling is great for kids, and think how much you'll be giving them as you expose them to new places and cultures. It adds a layer of complexity to everything, but that's true if you stay home as well.

Then again, if you do have a baby, you may stop valuing travel in favor of the world of adventure kids place at your doorstep, and that's OK too. Like I said, kids change everything -- most of all, you.

So the real question is not, "am I ready to have a baby?" Because nobody ever is. How can you be? You have no idea what it's like. The real question is: "Am I ready to become somebody else entirely, someone I may not even recognize in five years?" The baby is almost incidental -- anyone can change diapers. But the weight of having sole responsibility for another living person is so heavy that it will re-shape your very heart and soul.

If you're afraid the gigantic question mark that is the future of you+kids, hold off for a while longer. If you're excited about the prospect of growing into something completely unforeseen (and watching your spouse have a similar metamorphosis), by all means, go for it.