What will I become when/if I grow up?

ACCORDING to my friends I’m quite good at perking them up, motivating them, making them feel, if not good, at least that there is a way forward. It’s a version of me that I am very happy to run with.

It’s also something I strive to achieve as a parent, I mightn’t be brilliant at chasing about homework but I’ll talk anything through and hopefully arrive at some clarity. Sometimes I feel I even actually achieve it. The one arse I cannot get into gear is my own. Everyone faces difficulties, everyone gets depressed to some degree at some point although I’m really not sold on that recent study that thinks more of us should be medicated for it. Really? Mightn’t it perhaps be a question of making other changes? Anyway, while I can whip myself into a Pinterest frenzy of enthusiasm about upcycling anything from wardrobes to bean cans, larger scale enthusiasm has eluded me for a long time.

My daughter worries that she is unclear what she wants to do after school — and I am of no help as I’m still at a loss about what I want to be when I grow up.

Most of the time I plod along fine but every now and again I can’t really plod and I can’t talk myself out of it. No amount of kitchen dancing can activate energy and even if there is any it’s like being stuck in the washing machine, not even on spin, just a delicates rinse cycle. It’s not that I can’t muster enthusiasm, it’s that I can’t muster what to be enthusiastic about.

It’s weird and disconcerting for although never a planner as such — I never had life goals to hit by certain ages — I never thought I’d be this lost, this financially precarious, this clueless this late. But perhaps weirdest of all is that I am far from alone.