What was your dream life?

NYC as well, like many I guess. I was very influenced by the movie the Four Season where interesting urbane couples took vacations four times a year to exciting and dynamic locations and had amazing apartments in the city. It just seemed to me the height of sophistication with out being ostentatious and I liked the idea of having such close adult friendships, which I didn’t see in my own life except between children.

I wanted to be a gay version of Marie-Laure de Noailles nee Bischoffsheim, Vicomtesse de Noailles. I wanted to do a lot of the things she did, but start by being an olympic bronze or silver medal runner and easily successful student and graduate of Oxbridge or Yale.

I wanted an upper upper middle class life, with a large home in the country where we could entertain lovely friends almost every weekend and I could design and tend a garden. I didn't need luxury but I did need to fly business class only. So enough money to have constant comfort and freedom, but not excess. Quality people in comfortable surroundings, that was my dream.

I wanted to be a Gay suburban housewife with a smart successful husband

R4 I'd rather be the smart, successful husband

When I was a teen, I really wanted to join the Merchant Marine Academe. I wanted to become a ship captain, and my life be one of a sea fairing fairy. My parents had other ideas, and I became a filthy landlubber.

I’d have an apartment in NYC with a library. The library was wher3 I woukd meet my literary guests as we shared sherry & brandy from snifters, which we swirled. And our pipe was in our non-drinking hand

My dream life has always been simply to be happy, financially secure, and to help as many people as I could. And I'm thankful that my dream came true.

As a teen I wanted to be a successful real estate developer, drive a Bentley, live in a high rise in Toronto with country home in a small village.

Oddly enough, my high school friend Louis has that life and all because my sister rejected him and called him a goofy looser.

I read "Picture of Dorian Gray" and wanted to become like Oscar Wilde. I am a writer and analyst....sadly not in England or France and I did age. I live with a woman, no Bosie bit there's still time after the pandemic.

Not to be answered back to.

I wanted to be an artist, and paint whatever divine inspiration moved me to paint, and live by myself in a little cabin in the woods.

Yeah, I thought darling little cabins in woods near major metropolitan areas were cheap enough that starving artists could easily afford one.

Interesting thread. I thought it would get more replies. I watched Fame and wished to go to an arts school in NYC, then I visited San Francisco and dreamt of living there with the prince charming in a house on the top of some hill, owning my coffee shop or restaurant in the city. I had a successful life but completely different from what, as a teenager, I dreamt of.

Wealthy enough not to work, living in a country place with all the time I needed to write.

to be in a sitcom; I was out of work a few years ago and a friend in LA (I swear they DO exist) got me work as a background artist on two sitcoms

JIMMY FUCKING BURROWS gave the a.d. in charge of extras some special business for me to do; it got cut dammit, but .... imagine coming that close to your dream job.

No lines, a few reaction shots.

It probably kept me from going crazy when I had lost so much.

I group up poor in the rural dustbowl. I wanted to be a successful single young profressional ala 80s movies like The Secret of My Success and Working Girl. Now I live a simple single life in that same rural dustbowl, but I'm okay with that.

I dreamed a dream in times gone by When hope was high and life worth living I dreamed, that love would never die I dreamed that God would be forgiving Then I was young and unafraid And dreams were made and used and wasted There was no ransom to be paid No song unsung, no wine untasted

When I was very young, I wanted to be a superhero. I mostly grew out of it, though.

Later, and more realistically, I wanted to be a multi-disciplinary scientist, primarily focusing on chemistry and physics. Of course this means maths, also but I preferred statistics. I wanted to be among the greats who made new discoveries in how the physical world works.

Rich. Eventually by high school in he 80s that translated into working on Wall Street with a Fifth Ave apartment and a country house. Then I did - and realized working 80 hours a week at a job I hated wasn’t worth the money. Gave up the dream and found happiness just being.

I used to want some big mansion somewhere like Richie Rich. Have my own McDonald's and roller coaster on my property. It seemed so fancy.

These days, I'd just like to have a house with enough space for all my things that has a great heating and cooling system and that's in a safe area. I'd love to make enough money from my art to create more art and live comfortably for the rest of my life. A sweet dog and a sexy, supportive husband would be nice. A tiny handful of true friends as well.

My vision of it was always changing, and decades later still is. Wanting to live in an impossibly big old place evolved to wanting to live in a beautiful place, setting and architecture: to have a house with wings in this direction and that, with views in all directions and gardens; to live in the center of a vital city filled with secrets behind doors, lives stacked side by side and stop one another, Rear Window style. I wanted to to be a writer of some sort, but not fiction. I wanted to travel. I wanted to have a small group of friends, go to fun parties where strangers would rub shoulders, and have a partner, a husband, a someone without a label in my mind then to share it with (and sex, another idea that got more focused with time.)

I wanted a quiet life, though, not to be a captain of industry or someone very important or famous,and not outwardly flashy (I think I always liked the idea of having a driver to call on, but never of conspicuous cars, for example.)

I never had the driver, never got the things I didn't want, but got all the rest, or close enough. Better, even, on some key counts, because as a child I didn't know to expect happiness and that was a great discovery.

A globe-trotting archaeologist doing digs and uncovering all sorts of antiquities. (Reality: it's hard to crack, can be mundane, and a lonely life).

[quote] I group up poor in the rural dustbowl. I wanted to be a successful single young profressional ala 80s movies like The Secret of My Success and Working Girl. Now I live a simple single life in that same rural dustbowl, but I'm okay with that.

R16, did you ever live outside the rural dustbowl, even for a short while?

How did you make peace with single life in the rural dustbowl?

Thank you and good luck.

London.

"A globe-trotting archaeologist doing digs and uncovering all sorts of antiquities"

Is there even such a thing as a globe-trotting archeologist? I thought that if an archeologist decided to study the Incas or whatever, then they spent their career digging in Peru or Ecuador, or wherever their field of expertise was. No side trips to dig at Angkor Wat or the Siberian home of the mammoth hunters, because what the fuck does an expert on the Incas know about either?

Swimmin' pools, movie stars...

My father did exactly that, r6! He went to the Merchant Marine Academy at Fort Schuyler and eventually became a captain.

The money was very good, he said, but it turned out he gets really seasick, and he missed his home and family being away 9 months of the year, so he gave it up and went to law school.

You never know how things will turn out.

Dying and going to s fantasy world. Nothing in real life interested me. It was a lot harder for gay teens.

R25, that is true. They usually specialize in one geographic region/civilization (i.e Egyptologists, Maya-ologists). Mine would've been Peru for sure, and not the Inca -- one of the other lesser-known civilizations.

Oh, what could've been!

i dreamed of being a writer/novelist and living in a cottage in the English countryside.

lol

I wanted an apartment in New York City in Greenwich Village, with window sills in white marble. Wanted a library, lots of brandy in snifters. I've the apartment, wood sills, do not drink but still have snifters bought setting up housekeeping. I do have a small place in The Hamptons, more wood sills and one large brandy snifter filled with matchbooks.

For work, I had hoped to be doing something more creative (visual arts, creative-type writing, even essays). After my first taste of office life, I never wanted to work in an office again. Alas, I ended up working in offices for ten-plus years.

Become a third rate actress on a third rate tv show on a third rate cable network. Then marry a prince. Come between him and his family. Make lots of money on my royal status, or as I like to call it, my BRAND. Move to Montecito and be Oprah's BFF.

To meet and settle into a life with the man of my dreams- whoever that was and without much though to the details of where or how we lived. I kinda thought it happened, twice. Didn’t in the end. Oh well.

I wanted an overseas life and thought I would be a diplomat. I didn't rank well on the government list for the job so went back to school and got a master's degree teaching esl/efl. I have managed to live and work in over 7 countries and have traveled to over 70. I am living in the USA again now but just bought a ticket to Georgia so the fun continues.

Marrying as many gay men as I could!

bump

I wanted to be a writer, which I am. But I’m not the writer I wanted to be —a novelist and screenwriter. I tried but was weak and got derailed by a corporate job because rent in NYC.

Ironically the corporate job didn’t make me rich. I’m fine and can pay rent and all that, but I could never fully commit to it because my heart just wasn’t in it.

But you know, I have an amazing husband and a rent controlled apartment - so all things considered, I’m awfully lucky.

Unlimited funding to start my own gay4pay studio. Prey on desperate straight guys to have their asses up in the air for pounding. All bare off course.

Bohemian housewife, 70s California, drifting through the bungalow, painting messy abstract paintings, pottery wheel, benign neglect of the kids, swinging with husband, smoking grass, flowing garments and hair.

Back when i wished I was a woman, that was the woman I wanted to be.

As a teen among the preppies, I yearned to live in Cambridge and have sophisticated friends.

Then, when later dreams had faded, and my wife and I were finally divorcing, she asked, “What do you want to do with your life?” And I said, “If I could do anything I wanted, I’d be a painter in the tropics.”

Not much more than two years later, I was doing just that. I lived on Kaua’i and was actually selling my pictures in galleries.

Who knew?

But practicalities intruded, and other deeds needed doing. Dreams come and go. Ebb and flow.

Some things I always wanted never happened. But other rewarding things did. And now I’m probably more at ease.

I wanted to live in Pine Valley. Although it was a fictional town, I liked that it was small and quaint.