Me and Melissa. Represent.
This is why I love my life. The only constant, long-term aspects of my life are my family, friends, and pets. Out of all the long-term responsibilities people commonly get stuck with (jobs, mortgages, marriages, kids, debts) I only have the best ones, the things people wish they could guarantee joyous and permanent. I'm fortunate enough to have had these things all my life, and I'm confident I always will.
So if I happen to get a call from some secret admirer telling me they want to send me to Brazil for one year where I will work as a hair model, and give me my own little monkey to live with me in a tree house I get to design myself, but I have to leave TODAY! Well... I can do that!
I consider myself a very lucky girl.
....But sometimes I worry.
Some people (my age and older) make me feel like I'm wasting time, like I'm at some kind of crucial point I'm unaware of, and they say things like, "If you don't start planning and working toward your future now you'll be sorry when you're my age".
Then I notice other people my age (and younger!) finishing college, starting careers, getting married, buying houses, having 2.5 kids, I mean... Paying into 401 K's and shit! Setting up Roth IRAs! Investing in stocks!?!
I've never even had a credit card. Or car insurance. Or health insurance, for that matter. I barely know how to cook, and I've just picked that up over the last 6 months or so. Before that I lived off of dollar menus and Melissa's home cooked meals (which I'm pretty sure she made for me mostly to make sure I was getting some nutrition). I'm all proud of myself when I pay my bills on time, how does everyone else throw themselves into serious commitments that seem impossible or scary to me?
Because they have PLANS.
I am very grateful for the life I'm enjoying right now, but then I wonder, what if it doesn't last?
What if one day I wake up 45 years old and all my friends are married, moved away, and changed into fakey grown-ups who get their teeth whitened, set up blogs for the sole purpose of updating people about their children, and send out those pretentious fucking end-of-year letters with their Christmas cards?
Oh my god.
What if I turn into one of those weird older people who tries to stay hip and with it by hanging out with way younger people so I can pretend I'm still as fun, good-looking, and healthy as them?
What if I end up being the bad example to children of friends/acquaintances, where everyone is nice when I'm around, but then when I leave, the parents whisper to their kids things like, "Start planning now if you don't want to end up like that" and "that's why it's so important to go to college", and "I bet now you won't experiment with drugs and alcohol, huh?"
Jesus.
The problem (if it is even a problem) isn't that I don't know what I want to do, the real problem is that I want to do too many things, and if I choose to focus on only one one, it will lessen or eliminate the possibility of the other ideas I have. So if I choose one thing, I might just be another older person who wonders what would have happened if I had turned right instead of left, or just stayed in place and waited to see what came at me. The grass is always greener, right?
When I express these worries to some people, I receive consolations just as often as warnings, like "You're young! Live it up while you can! That's what your 20's are for"! Obviously I choose to observe this form of advice; it feels more natural to me. I try not to push myself into making huge decisions where the outcome is unpredictable. Everything changes, and everything depends on everything else. Therefore, I try to pinpoint ideas and goals pertaining to my future that I'm pretty sure about.
Like, I'm pretty sure I'd rather be an old lady who other people think is weird than an old lady who regrets decisions that turned out to be a permanent headache.
I'm pretty sure I won't ever get married. I'm not being young and jaded, I just have my own theories and opinions about the institution of marriage, and I don't see my mind being changed about it. Maybe someday I'll want to spend the rest of my life with someone, maybe have some kind of ceremony, but I don't see any reason to get the government involved in my personal relationships.
I'm pretty sure I don't really want to own a house. Being locked into a 30 year mortgage is pretty much being married, and I want to travel so much in my life that I don't want a huge investment holding me back.
I'm pretty sure I'll buy a sailboat, and live on that instead. It's a two-fer: owning my own place and means for travel.
I'm pretty sure I don't care if I never have a lot of money. I've never had a lot of money, and I've learned how to have a lot of cheap/free fun over the years.
I'm pretty sure I'll never make a career doing anything where I can't be myself. I have tattoos and piercings (with more to come) and I refuse to cover them. I like my own clothes, and I won't wear any type of uniform. I won't ever take shit from ignorant rude people while smiling and saying things like "I'm so sorry, what can I do to make you happy?". I did that for 5 years and learned my lesson. Never again.
"Better watch your soul, it'll leave ya like a hundred bucks" - M. Ward
And... That's about it. I'm not very sure of much else, which might be the main reason I avoid life-planning. I'd rather not have plans and try to make the best of the day-to-day than to make big plans that fall through. I mean, I'm as optimistic as the next 23 year old woman trying to grab life by the balls, but I'm realistic too.
Marriages usually end in divorce, or people have affairs, or they just stay together no matter how much they hate or are sick of each other because of children, financial investments, or sometimes just conditioned apathy.
Houses can get foreclosed, or people live in poverty in every other aspect of their lives just to keep their house.
Jobs fall through; I've known many people who've worked in their career for 15-20+ years who have gotten laid off or fired all of a sudden, and then don't know what to do because that was the only career they were trained and experienced in. Or they get so sick and tired of their career that they're miserable every day, no matter how good everything else is going in their lives.
Even having kids (supposedly the best thing that's ever happened to anyone) looks mostly like a miserable experience to me. They ruin your body, sleep, etc., they drain all your time and money, rob you of your personal wants/needs, and then as soon as they're old enough to think independently, they hate you!
So my only solution to this conundrum for now is to continue living however I want, any way that makes me happy. I've never cared much about what other people thought about what I was doing, so I don't think I'll start now. As my mom told Melissa, "You can't tell Kristina anything. She's going to do what she wants no matter what anyone says". Although this probably makes me sound difficult and defiant, I have to admit it's true. My dad always tells the story of how I wouldn't allow anyone to teach me to tie my shoes when I was little because I insisted "I can do it myself!". But really, I didn't figure it out til I was about 8 years old. I was really proud when I finally did it though.
I'm aware that this could all just be the way I think about things at this point in my life, and in 10 years I could change my mind like I always do, and decide I want to strive for that "American dream" lifestyle. But I'm gonna wait until I'm more than pretty sure about what I want long-term. I'm gonna wait until I know.
So I try to just focus on my usual standard for decision making: "how will I feel about this on the day I die"? I don't believe in god, or heaven, or the probability of an afterlife. As far as I know, I only have this one life, and on the day I die want to look back and see more beautiful memories than burdens or regrets. On the day I die, I hope I can smile and say "that was great, and now I'm finished".
*FACT. Google it. There are hundreds -perhaps tens of hundreds- of people who agree with me.
**Blog title is a quote I stole from my friend Luke. He's full of little snippets of wisdom like that :) **
