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You know how kids just can’t do anything wrong in their parents’ eyes?

While my dad was never very successful, he grew up as a typical Aussie male.. He bought a few Holdens, got a trade, bought a boat, got married then divorced, then met my mother and sold the boat and had a family. He’d always told me how the choices that he made in life were never good enough for his dad and how he never had any support from him. On mum’s side, her mum was sick and her dad was pretty much a no show after her early teens, so she had to fend for herself from a young age with little support once again. Her dad has always given her a hard time about the choices that she has made in life too.

This seems quite common talking to a lot of  mates’ parents. Their parents would always be disappointed by them – things like what career they chose, that they didn’t buy a house early enough, got married too late and so on.

Turn it around though, and things appear to be completely different now. A considerable portion of my friends since leaving school have either travelled, and blown their cash in sacrifice of life experience, or bummed around at uni and not really achieved much, and with the full support of their parents! It’s like the Baby Boomers have learned that the way that they did it was wrong. They are almost giving us approval, or consent to go out there and just live – not necessarily find a safe job or start a family – just enjoy life.

Maybe it’s the way that we portray our lives to our parents – I know that my parents are very proud of the way that my fiancee and I are living our lives. Working now – going overseas next year. My dad is extremely proud of the way that I can go out drinking with the boys without my fiancee, and she trusts me, and vice-versa.

All things considered, the Baby Boomers seem to have faith in their kids – the Gen Y’s, despite some pretty poor decisions on our behalf from time to time.

Maybe they are just learning that there is in fact more than one way to live your life? Or have they just had such a safe life by taking their parents’ advice and getting a safe job, buying a house early and starting a family young, that they are happy to see their kids out there experiencing new things and taking some risks? Risks that they never took and now regret it?

Well, we didn’t win the 90 million dollars. My fiancee wanted a ticket, I wasn’t phased so we dropped the $7.whatever on a ticket. No surprises – it was a waste of money.

I browse a lot of forums, due to the somewhat laid back nature of my job. I can’t believe how much people are up in arms over the fact that they didn’t win. What the hell? Are they really that disappointed? Did they really expect to win? It’s only a one in 45,379,620 chance of winning!

It’s amazing how for some people, the best thing that could possibly happen to them is by chance. I know I’ve spruiked the concept of life planning a fair bit, but really – if you want to get somewhere, just plan for it and make it happen. Don’t sit around in a life that you hate just hoping that one day it will change, because it won’t!

What does this have to do with me not winning the lotto? Nothing really. My direction wouldn’t have changed if we won. Sure, there would be a lot more money in our lives, but we would still be getting married, still head off backpacking through Europe in the new year, and still fly to Canada after that to enjoy life. It would have made my life easier, not better.

What’s my point? DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO! Obviously there are times when this doesn’t apply – in the short term you may have to make sacrifices or take risks, but plan to do what you want to do! Don’t wait for the opportunity to come along and tap you on the shoulder, because chances are it will never happen.

If you can’t tell by now, I love the word sustainable. It can be used in so many contexts. Today, I’m ranting on how sustainable your actual day to day life is.

My fiancee is a primary school teacher. While she does like the work, the workload is just ridiculous. When people complain about the amount of holidays that teachers receive, I get quite frustrated, as the majority of holidays that she takes are spent marking, or planning for the next term. It’s a 8am till 10pm job most days for good teachers. Full on!

Take last night for example. It’s a pretty standard night – we both get home at around 5pm, prepare dinner, eat, then clean up. By 6:30pm she is off in the study marking and planning until 10:30pm, then we go to bed. This isn’t out of the norm at all – it’s just day to day life. She has said herself, “I just can’t do this forever”. While I have spoken to her a lot about it and have encouraged her to entertain the idea of changing jobs, it’s nice to hear her actually saying, rather than me.

While she could technically teach forever, she would never have any hobbies, our lives will continue to be very separate, and in my opinion she would live a life of working and working only. No time for kids either!

The hobbies point has always struck me as interesting. I ride my bikes, I work on them, I dig trails, I work on computers at home, and so on. I’m always up to something, it’s what keeps me sane! Turn that around, and my fiancee has none of this. Obviously I don’t expect her to have the same hobbies that I have, but surely you need some sort of outlet for enjoyment and stress relief?

Next year is going to be a year of exploring. We are exploring the world, exploring our career options, and essentially exploring our lifestyle choices. With any luck we will end up in Whistler, Canada, working in jobs that are completely different to our current jobs. While they might not be our dream jobs, they will be different, and allow us to compare them with what we are doing now, and explore the options that we have for our lifestyles.

So have a think about it when you get some free time, can you keep up your current lifestyle forever? Are you giving much thought to where you want to go?

I’ve been watching a lot of The Sopranos lately. I love the show, and to be honest I don’t know why. The life that they are leading is one that would just never interest me. For those that don’t watch the show, it follows the life of a mob boss, and everything that goes on around him in his day to day life. Long work days, carrying the pain of killing people (often loved ones), and stress about work and the consequences of his exploits (being arrested or killed). His family has every possession they could want, yet so many problems as a result.

Walking to the bus interchange today I noticed that someone had spray painted “Life?” on the path. It wasn’t like the usual graffiti that I see around there. This was written more like one of those “No Milk” or “Go Vegan” tags, which aims to make people think. It made me think for sure. I don’t know what it was meant to mean but to me it seems as though it’s asking me, as I walk to the interchange to catch a bus to work. Is this life? Am I living? Or am I merely just “getting by”? Doing what everyone else does and calling it life..?

It also reminded me of a radio show called “Hack” that I was listening to a few weeks back. On this particular show they were talking about death and all things death. One of the people they spoke to was a freestyle motocross rider who “flirts with death” for a living. When asked about life, he says that a lot of people are nowadays just living and working 9 till 5, and he’s more scared of that than dying. For him it’s all about feeling life and “being alive”.

Incidentally this morning as I was thinking about all of this, I played a song called Entertainment by Rise Against. The line that struck me was “We’ve all made petty fortunes but we can’t afford a life”, and I really think it rings true in a lot of people’s lives. Why do so many of us earn decent wages, but never seem to have enough to really enjoy life? I’ve spoken about it before – working to live or living to work. For most it’s a very fine line, unable to shake the expectations of friends, family, colleagues and so forth. For others it’s easy to just leave the life that is expected of them, in order to live the life that they will enjoy.

After just having four days away from work over Easter, I’ve had a good break to catch up with my fiancee. Yesterday we just laid on a rug and lied in the sun for an hour or so, just talking about everything and enjoying the outdoors together. That, to me is living. I’ve realised that in order to enjoy life I only need a handful of things, very few of which have anything to do with money. Today I’m in an office surrounded by people still trying to get a big enough hit of coffee to wake themselves up at lunch time.

This ain’t living.