Life in the Fast Lane
A couple of months after starting my blog last year, I decided there were three things I wasn’t going to blog about anymore.
1) The fact that I’m single.
2) The fact that I don’t have a life plan.
3) The fact that I’m getting older.
And, if you go back and read my blog entries of the past few months, I think that I’ve kept my resolution quite well.
Today, however, I was thinking about life plans. Not just today, I guess. Most days. I think it’s easy, when you’re twenty-two or twenty-five or twenty-eight to think about the future as something out there and distant from your current life. And all the crazy and amazing things you’re going to do in the very many years you have left. When I imagine fifty I imagine myself as well-established and happy and settled. With a family and a career and a life. And it’s very possible that I will have those things and be that person. I hope so.
But I’m already on the downside of my 20s. This decade will be gone before I know it. And what’s to say that the rest of my life isn’t going to go just as quickly? Or even MORE quickly. I’ll spend the next twenty-three years the way I’ve spent the past five. Working. Eating. Exercising. Running errands. Paying bills. Reading books. Hanging out.
And then I’m fifty.
This is what provokes mid-life crises, I think. Getting to midlife and realizing that this IS real life. This is all there is to it. The future has become the present and you better get off your ass and do something.
So maybe I’m having a quarter-life crisis. I think that I am. Because this is real life. The future has become the present.
And consequently, I better get off my ass and do something.
I’ll let you know when I decide what that “something” is.
1) The fact that I’m single.
2) The fact that I don’t have a life plan.
3) The fact that I’m getting older.
And, if you go back and read my blog entries of the past few months, I think that I’ve kept my resolution quite well.
Today, however, I was thinking about life plans. Not just today, I guess. Most days. I think it’s easy, when you’re twenty-two or twenty-five or twenty-eight to think about the future as something out there and distant from your current life. And all the crazy and amazing things you’re going to do in the very many years you have left. When I imagine fifty I imagine myself as well-established and happy and settled. With a family and a career and a life. And it’s very possible that I will have those things and be that person. I hope so.
But I’m already on the downside of my 20s. This decade will be gone before I know it. And what’s to say that the rest of my life isn’t going to go just as quickly? Or even MORE quickly. I’ll spend the next twenty-three years the way I’ve spent the past five. Working. Eating. Exercising. Running errands. Paying bills. Reading books. Hanging out.
And then I’m fifty.
This is what provokes mid-life crises, I think. Getting to midlife and realizing that this IS real life. This is all there is to it. The future has become the present and you better get off your ass and do something.
So maybe I’m having a quarter-life crisis. I think that I am. Because this is real life. The future has become the present.
And consequently, I better get off my ass and do something.
I’ll let you know when I decide what that “something” is.
posted by Melanie at 3:45 PM
