my five year plan
i'm 27 now so i suppose i should have one
“and now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
i didn’t realize the pressure i’d been putting on myself until i let out a sigh of relief on the other side. its one thing to cerebrally be aware of the pointlessness of a plan when life seldom goes the way we hope. it is another to subconsciously hope regardless. the last time i had a grand life plan, a global pandemic ensued and threw it off course. a plan that would have culminated the day i turned the age i am now. its a strange realization that, in many ways, i am in the same place i was the day that plan shattered. it is strangely comforting, though, that i am absolutely not whom or where i thought i’d be by the end of it. wow, i had no idea what i wanted. i, rigid in my beliefs of how i expected life to pan out, was taught the joy of fucking around and finding out by being given no other choice. and every time i have attempted to plan anything at all since, i’ve been served curveball after curveball, constant reminders that i simply can’t control how things unfold. i’ve come to accept that my life purpose may not be a destination, and instead it is one long lesson of detachment. which is tough because i attach to things very easily. but it has been an interesting and worthwhile journey that i have learned a lot from. but also, what the fuck.
at twenty-seven, though, you’d hope to have at least certain things figured out. the big life stuff should at least sort of start making sense. a general direction of where i am headed, what i am doing, who i might be doing it with. feeling a bit like an adult, at least. some semblance of being a grown human being who has her shit together. i do not. in fact, in the months leading up to this milestone age, even the little bits i thought i had figured out have fallen apart, a nice clean line-up of dominos tumbling down one after the other. a blank slate. a fresh start has shown up at my door even though i didn’t ask for it. i have no other choice, and for once i am not scared by it. the you should have it figured out by now age has come and i do not have it figured out. i tell myself it’s liberating. actually, it is quite liberating. instead of expecting from myself, instead of striving to meet meaningless deadlines that i’m not even sure i want to meet, i can now simply allow myself to be.
in the first year, i want to take baby steps. imagine a drop of paint falling off the tip of a brush, onto a dampened sheet of paper. it is boundless in how it spreads. it takes its own shape. i want to take my own shape. i have never allowed myself to spread in whichever direction seems right in the moment. i have always hesitated, stopped to gauge logistics, wondered if going elsewhere instead makes more sense. there has always been an overarching is this leading me where i’m meant to be. i forget i am not meant to be anywhere but where my feet currently are. i’m a bit of a space cadet, i can’t lie. my head is often in the clouds, in the past, in the future. i would like to remember that i am here. too many little things slip through the cracks when you’re focused on the bigger picture. for instance - i have been proactive with my health lately, my recent reports say my cholesterol is back to normal. vitamin d, however, not as much. i overcorrected poor sleep with a constantly dark room. maybe i take baby steps in the sunlight, this year. i’d like to wake up with a sense of wonder for what the day might bring, and not with the many broader question marks on my mind. the next step, the now, not a someday that i have little-to-no perception of. i keep squinting to look forward to a future that has no shape. i’d like to look forward to the day ahead with no pressure on it to amount to something bigger. i’d like to stay grounded where i am, maybe sit in some grass. relax a little. pick up that pen that has rolled under my desk instead of making a mental note to grab it from there when i need it next. finally put up that extra clothes rail in my cupboard, i’ve known its meant to be done for too long now but it has never felt important enough to get to in the grand scheme of things. just go take a few laps in the pool no matter what time it is, instead of stressing about sunscreen because i woke up at nine instead of six. read that book cause the title is weird and the cover looks fun. take the random online course that looks intriguing even though its so obscure, will it even help. actually properly learn spanish instead of hoping i’ll make sense of it through bad bunny lyrics. whatever. i don’t know. i don’t want to plan it out and set expectations right now. baby steps.
in the second year, i’d like to return to myself. all those steps have to lead somewhere, after all. i have had a long time to exercise my gut-feeling muscle. i trust it more than anything else in the world. i hope the many many micro-decisions it helps me take in the first year lead me to feeling more like myself in the second. when i imagine having everything figured out, i imagine a version of me that i am not yet. getting there, sure, but not quite. there’s a gap that i hope i close. it isn’t very wide. there are things i know i must do, yet i hesitate. i’m not sure why yet but i’m sure i’ll make sense of it by the time i’m at this point of the plan. it's like i am standing on one side of a puddle in the road, needing to take a leap to the other side of it. but i don’t because i’m worried a shark will jump out of it and swallow me whole. from a puddle. the slightest bit out of reach, and all i must do is shift my perception a little bit to grasp it. it is one thing to have the knowledge and awareness of why one is the way they are, and a whole other to will yourself to do something about it. it would be a betrayal to myself if i did not do something about it. there are misfits that have overstayed their welcome that i hope i manage to rid myself of - i like the work i’m doing but i don’t align with who i’m doing it with; i enjoy your company but i don’t like how it made me feel when you did that; i promised myself i would get to this but i haven’t yet but that’s okay i can do it tomorrow. every decision, or lack thereof, is a tiny denial of the life i imagine myself feeling fulfilled in. can’t build the life i want by continuing to push it away, can i? i hope i leap towards myself. i hope i have gotten rid of the hesitancies that hold me back. the me i imagine feeling fulfilled as, she seems to have a great life. a happy one. how long will i continue to deprive myself of that happiness? i hope i am able to feel the most me i have ever been.
in the third year, i hope i learn what makes me feel alive. it’s been a long life of trying and struggling and failing to figure out what i’m supposed to be doing. i’ve always envied people on paths that have a clear next step, people who knew exactly what they wanted and pursued it with certainty. no matter how rigid, no matter how rudimentary. i have never been that way. there has always been too much pulling at me at once to have gone down a normal path. too many interests, too many possibilities, too many directions i could imagine taking my life. i kept hoping one would eventually emerge above the rest, that my passions would overlap in a way that both made sense and excited me. it never did. i never managed to fully let myself lean into it. i’d look towards the excitement, i may have lifted my hand to reach for it, but then held myself back with the practicalities. by the third year i hope i’ll have managed to free myself from those shackles. let my imagination run wild, let my brain out of the box, let the possibilities remain endless. there are boundaries in my mind that have taken the shape of a prison i’ve wanted to run away from. instead, i want to run towards something. i want to find something to run towards. i know i said the stuff about my purpose being the journey and all that earlier, but fine i admit that was a bit of fluff. i would like a destination as well. or at least a light at the end of this long tunnel of wondering what the point is. cause there has to be a point to all this, right? or am i meant to further learn that the point is the every day, its not really building up to a grand culmination or something? i don’t want to ponder on that or i’ll fall down another spiral. i’d say no more lessons, please, but i know better now. anyway. something that makes me feel alive. not an “i need to”, “i should”, “if i don’t”. an “i want to and nothing in the world could stop me no matter how much it tries.” i miss having something that makes me want to pour my all into it. indefinitely, forever, with all of me. its like there’s passion gently simmering inside me just waiting to find something to boil over into. i want to feel alive.
in the fourth year, i really hope i feel at home. there’s not much to say about this one, really. it’s one of those out-of-my-control things that i’m trying to placate myself with by contorting it into something i could control. i’ve tried making peace with where i am. i’ve tried fixating on a city and looking at it from every angle to make it work. i’ve tried willing myself to apply to b-school cause that’s a straightforward path. i’ve tried applying for jobs literally everywhere in the world. i’ve tried throwing darts at the map to help me decide. i’ve tried making extensive future relocation plans with potential future husbands. i have even tried leaving it up to fate to push me wherever it wants me to go. nothing has helped, nothing has worked, nothing has satisfied the longing for a true home in the world. a place i belong, a place i feel at ease, a place that doesn’t make me want to up and leave. by-product of moving cities every other year until the age of six, i assume, and then extensive ever-lasting culture shock and discomfort in the final one. not sure, doesn’t really matter. i can’t control the external factors. i can’t control where i am, what i do there, who i am with. but three decades, at this point, would be a very long time to feel unsettled. a very long time to skirt around the sidelines of community. i hope i manage to feel like i belong wherever i am by year four. i might even dare so much as to hope i feel like i fit in. i’d like to learn to look inward instead of everywhere else for a solution to my discomfort. take ownership of the walls i have built, try to climb over them to the other side. give wherever i may be a fair chance to woo me instead of rejecting it because it doesn’t satisfy the fantasy i’ve built up in my head over the years of the perfect place to be. even if i am still here. (although i hope i’m not, this city isn’t very livable and i assume it’ll only get worse in the years to come.) but even :) if :) i’m :) here :) i hope i’m able to stop reaching for somewhere else, because my arms are tired of stretching and grasping and longing.
and through all that, in the fifth year, i’ll become who i am. her, that version, the one i always imagine in the life i hope i’m living one day. i have never really imagined if she has a masters degree. or what she does for work, or how much she makes at that job. i’ve never imagined what her home looks like or where it is or who she lives with. i’ve wondered if she has met her person, sure, but i’ve never really pictured the specifics of that, either. i’ve never imagined the things i can’t control. all i know is she has an ease to her that i don’t, yet. she moves through life feeling sure in herself. at peace. grounded. whole. she’s happy and fulfilled. by year five i really truly hope i am happy and fulfilled. and if i manage to follow through with this plan i’ve drawn up, i’m pretty optimistic about my odds here.