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When I was a teenager — even a child — nothing seemed better than being an adult. I kept a folder on my family’s computer of pictures that represented my future desires — to live in a city, have exotic pets, travel.
I’m now nearly 35. In many ways, my life is as I’d hoped: I have a rewarding career, a good income, my own apartment, fantastic friends. I even have two cats of the breed that, growing up, I used to scroll on Google Images. You might call it a triumph of manifesting. But compared to my youthful vision, lately the future has been seeming somewhat murky.
Many of my friends have been getting married and starting families. I’m happily single, and am confident I don’t want children. What I sometimes envy is the progression represented by parenthood, and the opportunities — for learning and growth — it opens up. My friends with children have some structure for the coming decades: a non-negotiable commitment that grounds them, exposes them to new challenges and experiences, and brings with it previously unimaginable hardships and rewards. I, meanwhile, am staring down a blank page, without a blueprint for the next 10 years and beyond.
Parents may envy my freedom, disposable income and eight hours of sleep, and I certainly don’t take it for granted. But I’m conscious that any change in my life’s direction is entirely down to me. It goes beyond anxiety about ageing: I have friends in their forties and older who model rich, rewarding lives. Still, they uniformly have partners with whom they can plan their next moves. Most of them also have kids who continue to be a focus after they’ve left the nest. When I picture my life in 10 years, it looks much the same as now — just with geriatric cats. That could be a good outcome, suggesting my world had not been upended by unemployment, illness or war. But I don’t think I am the first to wonder about a life that is in many ways wonderful: is this it?
Parents may envy my freedom, disposable income and eight hours of sleep, and I certainly don’t take it for granted. But I’m conscious that any change in my life’s direction is entirely down to me.
Even in my mid-twenties, it felt energising to list my pipe dreams: live by the sea, move to Paris, become fluent in French. Now, however, the practical questions feel large and consequential: can I even get a visa for France? How would I support myself? Which sea! I’ve laid solid foundations. Am I willing to risk doing reckless damage, such as by relocating to a country where I don’t speak the language? And, if not, how can I build upon them, in non-superficial ways? The step-up from twenties to thirties was obvious — as easy as replacing Blu Tack’d posters with framed art and sofa-surfing with hotels. Now, heading towards mid-life, paths are diverging sharply: parents are moving along a track with in-built hurdles and milestones, while I dither at the starting gate, arms full of construction materials but unsure of which direction to head in. What brings me comfort is the thought that I’m not standing here alone. “It’s something I think about every day: how I am living off-script,” says Sari Botton.
Botton is, like me, a writer; we’ve also both left cities we love (New York in her case, London in mine) for more affordable places nearby. But Botton has been married for 20 years, and has just turned 60 — “grandparent age”, as she puts it, when we connect over Zoom. Though she and her husband are happily childfree, the milestone birthday weighed on Botton as another life stage she’s opted out of, distinguishing her from her peers.
Her path first diverged at age 26, when she divorced her first husband. “I thought I was on a very particular path, the path you’re supposed to be on … then I got off it,” she says. Back then, the thought of now what? was liberating: “I felt like I could march to my own drum.” She still feels that way, Botton adds. (On the pinboard behind her is a sign: Who the fuck are they, and who cares what they think?) But it can sometimes be accompanied by anxiety about what she’s “supposed to be doing … What does it mean to be an adult, if you don’t have the trappings of adulthood?”
What Botton has realised is that she has ambitions “that are not part of the package we were sold”, and goals that relate to her community and creative projects. One is Oldster, the magazine Botton founded on Substack where she interviews interesting, accomplished individuals of all ages about their experience of getting older.
Reading her series of ‘Oldster questionnaires’ floods me with the same sense of possibility I used to feel saving pictures to my computer, or daydreaming about Paris. The diversity on display proves that there is no single path, no consistent set of milestones or timeline by which to achieve them — everything is still to play for.
Botton and her husband Brian have learnt to embrace this “alternative approach to life”, and the uncertainty that goes with it, she tells me. In the past, they have made the most of their relative mobility, making unplanned relocations or renting out their home for a change of scene. Though Brian now has a desk job, they remain open to uprooting again in the future, Botton says. “We both enjoy having some question marks, some undetermined possibilities.” At the same time, she admits, she can sometimes feel daunted by the “tyranny of choice, like: Oh my God … what do I want?”
For people not on the parenthood path, that question can be deceptively difficult to answer, says Zoë Noble, an English freelance photographer. “It’s wonderful to have a blank page — but terrifying as well.”
With her husband, James, Noble established the online platform We Are Childfree to connect and advocate for people who are childless by choice. One of their offerings is a workshop about imagining “your childfree life”, and creating a vision of the future that feels authentic and fulfilling.
The first step is “stripping away all of the bullshit, all of the expectations” and external noise to attune to one’s own desires, Noble says. “For women especially, that can be really difficult, because you’ve literally been conditioned to listen to everyone else.”
Like me, Noble knew she wasn’t interested in motherhood when she was in her twenties, but she struggled to be honest about it. “I’d still tell people, ‘Maybe one day,’ ‘I’m not sure,’” she says. Now, she sees that she was afraid of being judged.
Even once she and James were married and committed to being childfree, “we still felt like we were following a script,” Noble says, “like we needed to have these big careers, be earning a certain amount, have a house”. It goes to show just how difficult it can be to let go of those ideas about adulthood, maturity and ‘the good life’, even if they do not interest or serve us.
Like me, Noble knew she wasn’t interested in motherhood when she was in her twenties, but she struggled to be honest about it. “I’d still tell people, ‘Maybe one day,’ ‘I’m not sure,’” she says. Now, she sees that she was afraid of being judged.
To identify what she wanted for herself, Noble reflected on moments when she’d felt truly engrossed, energised or inspired, at work or in her personal life. For example, having her photos published in glossy magazines did not feel as rewarding as her work “with real women, lifting them up” through We Are Childfree. That was enough to point her in a direction, Noble tells me. “It’s not about knowing 100 per cent. This is the path for me — it’s taking one step.”
Childfree women in particular can feel pressure to progress in their careers to justify their decision, or otherwise achieve something with “all that free time”, Noble says, gesturing with air quotes. But that reflects “pronatalist” messaging, promoting motherhood as the only valid path for women. “We’ve been told that if we’re not producing children, we’ve got to be producing something else.”
Ideas like legacy, for example, tend to overlook the fact that “at some point, we’ll all be forgotten,” Noble says — while desires for growth or progression can mask the belief that we’re only as worthy as our achievements. “We get so stuck on the linear goals … Actually, life can be about curiosity.”
That was what motivated Noble’s latest big leap. In November 2023, she and James relinquished the lease on their apartment, downsized their possessions and moved into a campervan. They had been living in Berlin for 12 years and felt ready for a change, Noble says. When their landlord hiked their rent, “we were just like: ‘Let’s do it!’”
That was just one “mad idea” made possible by their less-travelled path, she points out. When we speak on Zoom, Noble is parked roadside in Wales, with sheep grazing outside; soon she and James will chase the sun to Portugal for winter.
It’s not a conventional experience of mid-life, Noble agrees, but it feels true to her. “For a lot of my twenties, and even some of my thirties, I was letting life happen to me … I finally feel now like I’m living authentically.” That’s the extent of her aspirations for the future, Noble adds — to continue making “that active choice”, through her changing priorities and circumstances. Even when there are practical considerations, like paying rent or caring for elderly relatives, “there’s often a lot that we can decide for ourselves”, she says.
After speaking to Noble and Botton, I realise that much of my trepidation centred around needing to have something to show for myself, if not a partner or kids. In the past, I’ve thought writing books might be a source of meaning, but that only piles on pressure.
When I try to shut out others’ expectations and ideas of what may seem worthwhile, a different vision of the future emerges. It’s vaguely drawn, but feels distinct from my present, and reflective of all I’ve experienced in the interim years. After all, so far in my life, I’ve created opportunities, challenged myself and made tough decisions. I cannot know the future, but I can trust myself to navigate it. As Noble puts it, the blank page may be daunting, but “the reality is, you can fill it with anything you like”. The only way to mess it up is to be too afraid to make a mark.
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