Three Year Plans

While I was in highschool, my long term plans looked something like this:

1. Graduate highschool
2. Graduate college
3. The rest of my life

That’s a 6-8 year plan, but after #2 is finished, it gets a bit tricky. “The rest of my life” is not really a manageable goal, nor does it offer any insight to what I can expect my life to look like for a while.

My plan ran out last May and I’ve been drifting in #3. In October, I had a 2 month plan (get to December) and in January I had a 5 month plan (one semester of part time student teaching, then re-evaluate current life goal). These plans were not terribly effective. They hung over my head with the constant option to quit and they didn’t help with any visions of the future.

Right now, I’ve made a three year plan and, while I really don’t like my three year plan and might in fact hate my three year plan, I do think it’s a good thing to have a long term goal to work towards. I think it’s better to feel committed to what you’re doing than always thinking about that option to get out. After the third year, I’ll have that problem with “The rest of my life” again, but that’s something I don’t think I’ll be able to avoid. Hopefully by that time, I’ll have made other plans.

Growing Up

I have never felt so old as watching the college kids move in this weekend.  Listening to them make plans on the bus and watching the boxes disappear into buildings has made me realize; somewhere between graduation and now, three months later, I grew up.  Of course, I was considered “grown up” well before then, but I had never before labeled myself “adult.”  Until now.

I know how much debt I’m getting into.  Though I know it was a mistake, I was not fully aware of the loans I had taken out in order to help pay for college.  For the most part, I let my parents deal with the finances.  Call me spoiled if you want, but that’s the way it was.  I’m paying my own way now, and I am acutely aware of how much I’ll be paying off after graduation.

This means I’m getting thrifty.  I need to pick up some new work clothes for the fall since I’m woefully short on business attire and I’ll be doing so at the thrift store down the road.  I don’t go out to eat.  I try to minimize my expenses as much as possible.  Laundry gets washed in the tub.  Plastic bags are washed and reused.

What makes me feel so much older than the college kids though, is that 10:30 is bedtime now, not the time to go out.  It seems the older I get, the earlier I go to sleep.  Freshman year it was 2:00 at the earliest, sometimes much later.  By senior year, I was asleep at 12, sometimes earlier.  After running after preschoolers this summer, being asleep by 10:30 was late.

While waiting on the bus with the girls behind me making plans for later that night, I knew it was time to be the adult.  Get out of t-shirts and jeans, learn to talk on the phone, pay your own way.  Grow up.