This is your brain

That will be a very obscure reference to some people.  Particularly if they were born after 1990 give or take.  Anyway.  Of course I have not been updating here loads.  As I get older, I'm either less interested in all the crap that mulls about in my head, or my interest in getting it out and written down has waned.  It's hard to tell.  It used to distress me and now it doesn't.  It is what it is.

But it doesn't mean life doesn't continue and that there aren't a myriad of interesting things slipping past unrecorded.  I could write about my trip to Australia and my time with S and T.  I could write about S and her long struggle and then loss of her one newborn baby but the fact that she has another.  I could write about dates that go nowhere.  Parents obsessed with death.  Annoying colleagues.

Maybe another time.

So last post I talked about the egg freezing.  I'm about to get started on that.  I'm keeping track of it on another blog, specifically to record that journey.  Mostly because I find personal blogs helpful but I didn't want to put all that here and have people coming to find out more about 'egg freezing' come and find out about my life in general.  So you can find me here if you're interested.

So I've been putting  a lot of my thoughts there, and I may repeat what I'm going to write about here.  But what I've been thinking about is more long term and personal.  So related, but different.

I'm trying to figure out exactly how long I have until I need to pull the trigger on deciding if I want to be a single mother by choice or not.  I don't think it's very long at all.  Kids are a lot of work and not all that interesting for the first bunch of years.  And they take a lot of energy.  I don't want to necessarily be starting that journey at 45.  More like 40.  Or 41.  But I turn 39 this year you see.  So that means I have only a small amount of time to make decisions that may enable this future decision, if it's what I want.

It doesn't mean I've given up on dating.  But I'm tired of dating.  And I'm tired of trying and talking and meeting.  And if I keep waiting forever, it may never happen.  This is something I can make happen.  But then it may mean my dating life is actually mostly over.  Not that it's been so stellar up until now.  But still, hard to give up the potential.

I'm sure this is something I will continue to think about.  Particularly towards the end of the year as I look to wrap up the PhD.  I need to get a job.  I was thinking I could get a fun job teaching in a different country and have an adventure.  But no I'm thinking I need a good job with childcare so I can get my two years in so I can claim maternity leave.  So in some ways, the decision, or rather, the future decision, certainly has implications for my next step in life.

I was talking to D on Monday about my life.  I was saying how actually, after I don't know how many years of being miserable, I'm actually generally pretty happy.  I like my house, I like what I do, I like my things.  But then what?  So what?  What's next?  Is that all there is?  I just keep doing what I'm doing forever?  I always wanted a family.  Maybe I just need to have a family on my own.  It's not what I would have chosen, certainly.  But the choices are limited.  Like I said.  I'm not making a decision today.  But the egg freezing process has certainly brought it more central to my mind.  And it's always good to have a distraction when you're supposed to be writing a huge fuck off book.