Live, Love, & Laugh

Day 02 - Where you’d like to be in 10 years

What better day to answer this than the 2nd of January (my birthday!)? When I’m 30 years old exactly, I’d like to have had the worldly experience I currently yearn for. I hope that I’ve explored Paris, Venice, Barcelona, Geneva, and other cities in Europe at least once more to my heart’s content. I hope that I’ve lived in New York, even for just a little while. I hope I love my job and have done well with myself in my career. I hope to still have a great relationship with my parents. I hope to be in touch and contact with all of my closest friends from high school and college and most of my other friends as well and that I remain close to a multitude of them. I hope that I’ve made other new friends as well through my travels and my career. I hope I never feel as if I’m alone, with many friends and loved ones to rely on, and I hope I am the friend and individual that others feel as if they could rely on. I hope that I have a home that lives up to all my expectations. I hope everyone I truly love and care about is healthy and happy. I hope I have no regrets and am content 10 years from now.

I’m now officially 20. It’s intense. It’s significant. It is not OLD. I feel as if everyone keeps telling me that I should feel old because they felt old when they turned twenty, but if anything, I feel the exact opposite. I feel as if I have my whole life in front of me, and it hasn’t even really fully started yet. I’m excited at the new prospects and this new phase of my life I’m about to begin.

I’m pretty sure I disliked (or at least did not enjoy to the fullest) being 19 and the year 2010, so it’s nice that both aspects of life have passed me by at pretty much the same time and are memories of the past. Being 20 is going to be so much better than being 19.

What does it mean to be 20?

Ideally: Well, it probably means that I’m probably at the peak of my attractiveness, and my metabolism is also probably at its best (I probably should take more advantage of this by eating fast food by the ton morning, day, and night while still avoiding the gym like I avoid broccoli). It means I don’t have a ton of responsibilities beyond doing well in school and not doing any of the ridiculous things they show other idiotic college students getting themselves into (I feel like I go to a good school, and I work hard for the most part: doesn’t that mean I’ll be one of the successful?). It means I can experiment with whatever I want. It means I can begin to form new habits and new routines, and if I don’t like it, I can start over whenever.

Realistically: It means Maybe I should start developing some healthy habits. It means Maybe I should start learning to cook something beyond the basics of pasta, soup, and tollhouse cookies. It means Maybe I should start establishing a basic plan for life after graduation and honing some fiscal sense, and not feel as if I’m entitled to a certain level of success. It means Maybe I shouldn’t forget what’s important to me and what my principles are and that starting over doesn’t come without repercussions, which could be as minor as spent energy or as major as time forever lost.

Regardless, I’m looking forward to this year, and hopefully my twenties will begin with a bang! BTW, I chose the above picture to accompany this post because it is iridescent; looking at it fills me with hope at the thought of the beauty and the limitless bounds of the future. Here’s to the start of a new phase of my life as well as a new and hopeful beginning to 2011 as an older (but not too old) and more sophisticated individual.

(Source: Flickr / gwendolynkoid)