Hello and welcome to Sage and Seeker. This is a personal blog account about mental health and finally discovering happiness in my late 20’s and now early 30’s.

I’ve struggled with my mental health since I was young and experienced depression for the majority of my twenties – it definitely was not a happy time for me. Luckily, I managed to recover from the worst of my depression at around 29. However, I then realised that the life I’d created for myself, despite my expectations, did not make me happy.

I’d done everything as I was meant to – gone to university, established a good career in Financial Services and even moved to the city to pursue this. Yet all I found was constant stress and burnout. I thought that getting into a relationship would make me feel better, but somehow that made me feel lonelier than ever.

I finally accepted that the life I’d created wasn’t right for me. Whilst I loved living in Manchester, I knew I couldn’t carry on being miserable. I also couldn’t afford to continue to live in Manchester and start a new career.  

After five years, I finally decided to move back to the countryside and live with my parents. I initially planned to do a master’s degree in Psychology but never actually completed my application. This meant that I was almost 30, had no career plans and was living back with my parents. I felt like a complete failure. 

Fast forward 18 months, I’m 31 and still living with my parents. Yet I’ve never been in a better place both mentally and physically. 

 So much has changed in the last 18 months. I’ve completely changed as a person and could have never envisioned being as content as I am now by going ‘backward’ in life. I no longer wonder why I can’t seem to make life work. I understand that I simply have different goals than those seemingly forced upon us by society. And I’m okay with that.

 

I used to be the person that freaked out about having any gaps in my CV for future jobs. Yet I saved up and went travelling for six months last year. I used to say that I’d never be self-employed. Yet here I am working self-employed doing admin for financial advisers (I figured I may as well put my previous experience to use and make some money from it whilst I work on my own projects). Everything that I believed in my twenties has gone out the window.

I don’t regret any of my decisions, although I could have probably learned some lessons a bit sooner than I did. 

In this blog I’ll share my experience of mental health, how my life changed since moving home and the lessons I’ve learned along the way. If you’re feeling lost in life, I hope my blog will help you find what happiness is to you,and create a life that you want.