Saturday Writing Prompt

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Well, that’s a loaded question isn’t it?

At my age I hope one answer would be that I am still alive, still capable of functional thought and action but there are days I have my doubts about that one. Not so much the alive part but the functional part.

As a wife, there are days I have my doubts in this arena also. Shocking revelation to many readers here but please don’t read more into this than I am able to comprehend myself at this point in time. He goes one way, I go another and what that means for either of our futures I really don’t know. I do find myself asking the question, “Did we ever have anything in common at all?” lately. Enough said on this one for now.

As a mother, I hope that another child, or maybe two will have married; that there are more lovely grandchildren running amok in my life and that all of these various components are happy, really truly happy.

As the student, well crap, I don’t even know where to head with that prediction. I am such an nontraditional student in the first place. Here is this woman, who at forty something decides to go to college to earn her degree. She gets the AA but then just can’t leave well enough alone and jumps into the process for her BA for no apparent reason other than she:

-likes education

-wants a challenge

-is maybe slightly masochistic

-is trying to prove a point? and to whom?

-is determined to reach a lifelong goal (Okay, I like that one)

The truth of the matter is that I have no intent of doing much at all with this degree once I have it. I simply could have taken every single one of these classes that have been a part of my life for the past few years as audit classes. But dammit, I realize that secretly, or maybe not so secretly, I wanted that piece of paper that has my name nicely printed in calligraphy smack dab in the middle with the nifty designation of Bachelor of Arts underneath it. If, by some cosmic alignment of universal force, someone  somewhere asks me to apply all this sociology that I am cramming into my brain cells in a practical sense, well then I just might do something with this degree once it is conferred. If not, then I have really truly been working for the last few years to simply finance my odd obsession with education.

Which brings me to the last role of significance worth mentioning here.

As the employed American worker, in 10 years I hope I am not employed. To my new boss, when you read this, please do not fire me on Monday. I still need a paycheck because I have not figured out my life quite yet. The excitement of the new changes in my professional life are intriguing, and actually fill me with a sense of renewal. I must be honest though. I have worked a long time. Not really long enough to retire but a long time. My ass is big enough. I don’t want to sit on it all day and watch daytime TV but I also can see the end of the employee journey getting closer.

That’s about as close as I can get to any 10 year predictions right now. If those brain cells of mine are still firing in 2022 maybe I’ll post an update so we can all see what actually happened.