I've noticed that young(er) people enjoy talking about their 10-year plans. What a luxury this is. You have to grow old to appreciate it. We want to live in New York and then in Hawaii. I want to be living in Alaska in ten years. I'll be in a Ph.D. program. And so on.
My ten year plan is quite modest: I'd like to be alive. I'd like to have some hair and my teeth. I hope most of my friends are still alive. It would be great if I were in my right mind. I'd like to be walking well.
I'd like to live for a year, maybe more, on a warm beach, with clean air. After doing some research, I pick Mazatlan.
I would have a light, white linen, loose fitting, bathing suit cover-up that went to my ankles, so I could walk on the beach without causing projectile vomiting in others. I'd swim in the Sea of Cortez. I'd take my kayak with me. I'd learn enough Spanish to be a polite visitor. I'd eat lots of tacos and bean burritos. Like now, I'd read and draw and watch movies, and hang out with Tom.
I like it! Can I come to Mazatlan with you? We can wear twin ankle-length bathing suit covers.
ReplyDeleteWe can walk down the beach together and gossip.
DeleteExcellent planning! I don't think I have yet had a ten-year plan come to pass myself. Perhaps I should adopt yours.
ReplyDeletemost of the past 26 years, the ten year plan has been "get through school". it's interesting to think that 10 years from now, my kids will both be gone, my husband will have been working (presumably!) for six years, and we should have some actual disposable income. My whole life i've kind of lived on a 1-2 year plan, with the goal being to succeed in school and stay as out of debt as possible. time to start having some better dreams. ♥
ReplyDeleteI've never made a 10 year plan. You know how the saying goes, "We plan, God laughs"
ReplyDeleteMy fiancé and I are about to close on a house - its livable as is, but we have plans for it. Big, expensive plans. We hope to have those plans finished in the next 5 years, but I wouldn't say I'm planning on it.
I am atwitter with my one-year plan: January (this!) sees us paying our LAST COLLEGE TUITION. Three kids in, and three kids now out, after 8 long, LONG years of tuition purgatory. So my one-year plan is to take a few trips.
ReplyDeleteAnd then? We'll think about that 10-year plan. (This sounds dreary.)
After wanting to change something about our current life, we looked at buying a downtown condo but it was way out of our budget for what we would get, looking at an acreage and deciding it was a bit too far for a daily commute (he would get to enjoy the weekends) so no horses or chickens or pet pot belly pigs, I read some blogs of people who are living aboard for anywhere from a year to they may never come home. Our new 3 yr plan is to save to go abroad for a year. With one child married just after Christmas, two more in university and one graduating HS this year they will all be a little more settled and maybe just maybe be able to join us for a portion of that year abroad. We haven't told them, we're going to hold off until we are about six months away...just in case we need it to be a four or five year plan to get everything squared away. Wish us luck! Up to this point in our lives we have been more of 1-2 year planners because as lizzeroo pointed out sometimes it feels like God is having the last laugh.
ReplyDeleteI missed this post until tonight. Your candid plans for the future echo many of my own as I interact with my mother.
ReplyDeleteWe spent the first three decades planning for the future. We saved, sacrificed and deferred some dreams so our future would be comfortable. The future has caught up to us. It's hard to shift gears. Shutting out the laughter to enjoy the present seems to be the hardest plan of all.
Love how it morphed from just being able to walk to walking on a beach in a white coverup eating tacos. That was a fun trip. No one really prepares you for the aging thing and how a body just fails. When people said stop basting yourself with oil in the sun, I thought, bwaaa haaa haaaa, and now the spots! Thanks for a great post.
ReplyDeleteLeeAnna Paylor
my blog is Not Afraid of Color! lapaylor.blogspot.com