What are your plans for the future?
Someone posed me this question today, and I couldn’t help but be taken aback by the sheer coincidence it had with my innermost thoughts. It’d been a question that has been bugging me incrementally over the past week.
Life to me is a simplistic pie. There’s a chunk for career, one for family, another for romantic relationships and one final portion for my own personal development. Each of them is heavily governed by varying levels of pride, suspicion, jealousy, optimism and pessimism. Of course, as much as I want to be a fatalist, I’m no Jekyll and Hyde. And I’m not as morbid as I imagine myself to be. All the negative feelings I once held so dear and lauded them as my very “unique selling point” have been diluted to become pawns of painful realism. Be practical. Dollar and cents. Input and output. At the end of the day, what is in for me?
So, what are my plans for the future? It really means what is there in the future for me? I’ve never been a good practitioner of self-determinism; I’d very much prefer to leave myself buoyant to fate. I’ve never gotten what I’d set out to achieve or chosen. I’ve learnt to settle for second bests, or the bearables. And when someone asks me this profound question, 2 months away from my 25th birthday, I’m lost for an answer.
I’d want to be a make-up artist, a hairstylist, a fashion designer. But where am I?
And I’d always aspired to be in marketing, to be writing, to be known for my flair. But somehow, things have been thrown off tangent – I’ve been thrown off tangent. But I’m enjoying the company, the learning process.
But then, is this what I want to do for the next 10 years?
Seriously, I don’t know. What I do know is that in the next 5 years, I want my own place, a car and work life balance. That’ll be when I’m 30. I’d been candid of this desire on my very first interview session. And I remain as that. I might be with Sugar, we might have a place in Punggol with dark walls and chandeliers, and 42inch LED TVs bought on whim and have a rainshower installed in my bathroom. Sugar could pick me up from work. We’ll go to my parents on weekends for a short get-together. Our bunny, maybe the second after Pony moves on to bunny heaven will have his own room. I’ll have a room dedicated to a superfluous amount of shoes, bags, clothes and accessories I do not wear. I’ll be at managerial level, I’ll be picking up a masters. I’ll start lecturing part time at a tertiary institution. I’ll finish writing my 3rd book. Be known for my quirky takes on plays, movies, whatever. Really?
You see, I know what are the end products I am aiming for, but I don’t have the routes mapped out like Google. So what would my career path be? So what would Sugar be working as? So who would be taking care of my ageing parents? Who’s going to take care of me when I’m old? I hate kids.
I’m at a point where I’m choosing to escape from my mirage of problems. I don’t know what to say but health is a great issue in my life at the moment. Health of others, health of my own, maybe. I don’t know. I might be thrown off tangent, once again. So what’s the point of planning? So what’s the point of goals and promises when nothing is ceteris paribus?
Optimism is only for the blessed, let’s just say that. I’d just live life like a roller-coaster ride – just close my eyes and wait for the 360s to be over.
