What If I Look Back and Think 'Bollocks'?

Not a great title for a post I know but it does get to the heart of how I'm feeling at the moment.

My life goes by in a predictable blur.

I'm working 4.5 days a week. I leave early in the morning so I don't really see Thing 1 and Thing 2 at all in the morning. Luckily I can leave work and be home by about 5.30. My mother-in-law looks after the children 3 days a week and my husband and I do one afternoon school pick-up each.

I'm lucky - I'm healthy, my children are healthy, I have a roof over my head, food on the table, good friends and family.

But I'm still pissed off most of the time.

I earn a good salary but not as much as I could do because I'm not prepared to put in the hours that a higher-status job would require. And frankly? My career bores me to tears. And yet on the other hand I'm jealous of other women I know with higher status jobs than me and feel inadequate because I'm not achieving.

I am a mostly good mother I think and yet I spend ridiculous amounts of time thinking I'm a dreadful parent. Working full-time is hard and I know I don't put as much time and effort into helping my children with school work etc as other mothers do.

More feelings of inadequacy.

I share my house with my mother-in-law three days a week which DRIVES ME FUCKING NUTS. But she's great grandparent and my children benefit from their close relationship with her. I, on the other hand, do not benefit from her proximity and experience times when I can barely act civilly.

I'm just worried that I will look back at this time, when the children have left home and think 'Why did I live my life like that? What was the point?'

And yet I know I have to work. My husband's job is well paid but insecure. He suffers from depression and has had long periods off sick in the past. Athough he seems much better I worry that depression may strike again and I will be the only breadwinner. Neither of us are going to inherit shedloads of money so I need a pension. We're generally hopeless with money so I need to work to get pay off and keep us out of debt. The credit-crunch has reminded us all that having up-to-date skills and a manageable job is not to be sniffed at.

And yet I wake up every day and think 'Oh Lord, here we go again. Back on the treadmill.'

I try and plan alot of things so that when I'm not at work we (I) have things to look forward to. But am I kidding myself? Will I look back and think I did everything badly? Wonder what it was all for?

I'm constantly amazed at people who make radical changes to their lives and seem to thrive on the uncertainty, the adrenalin. 'That's not me' I think.

I'm scared I guess. Risk averse. It's all fine at the moment so I just keep going. But will I look back and think 'Bollocks'?

I'm worried I will.

Intellectually I know that all it would take is a health scare, a money scare to make me long for this life as it is now. I know I'm beyond lucky, I know. I know all this. If I survive long enough to see my children grow up happy and healthy I will be a lucky, lucky woman. But how do I feel it on a daily basis.

What gets you through the day?