I was having a discussion with a couple of friends over the weekend about where we saw ourselves in 10 years when we graduated high school versus where we ended up 10 or so years later. At 18/19, I was a loser. I spent the last two years of high school fawning over some girl who didn't feel the same way about me, ignoring my friends and my grades. It was by sheer luck that I managed to get into college at all. I never really had a career aspiration other than making money, but I never could have pictured that I would eventually move out of my home state and be doing what I do now. And I never would have guessed that I would be engaged to the chick that was bitchy to me when we first met during Orientation Weekend. Focus: Where did you think you would be 10 years ago? How did it work out? Alt Focus: Where do you see yourself in life 10 years from now?
I'm actually pretty much exactly where I imagined myself to be 10 years ago, except for my job. I thought I'd be moving up to the next level of my career starting around last year, but instead I just keep getting *almost* hired at places where I'd actually be doing something I want to do. I try not to ignore the success I've had on the freelance side, which has actually been more than I was expecting (I thought it would take longer to get published by some of the magazines I have already had a byline with), but it's hard in the face of everything else. Those celebrations are very fleeting compared to the day-to-day reality. But at least the job I have instead is just left of center. I could always be just another person trying to live their dreams in New York City as a waitress. I have pretty typical dreams/expectations for my mid to late thirties. I want to be kicking ass at work and settled in some cool apartment with my person. I also hope I'll have published a book by then. But it feels sillier now to plan that far ahead than it did ten years ago.
Focus: I didn't know where I would be but I sure as hell didn't think I would still be living in the same town, working at the same job. Alt-Focus: In 10 years I'll have a house with a large garage and a motorcycle lift so I can finally have a good set up to work on my motorcycle along with any new ones I get during that time.
I'm not the oldest person here, but I'm older than most of you; ten years ago, I was a few months shy of 30 and planning my move from Illinois to Las Vegas. I had no idea exactly where I'd land; I had aspirations of moving into IT, otherwise probably working in the casino/hospitality industry. Instead, after a crappy call center job I ended up in a cushy civil service job, then the housing market crashed and I'm living far higher on the hog than I could just about anywhere else. In another ten years, hopefully I'll be in the same job, in shape and have a growing nest egg. Or maybe I'll be living in my brother's basement in Illinois; time will tell...
When I was 25 I graduated college and entered law school. I was uncertain and decently scared and pretty lazy. I did hope to be either a prosecutor or in the FBI someday. These things did not happen. Ten years from now I'll have a house, probably a kid or three, and business should be predictable, sustainable, and pretty damn lucrative. I'm extremely hopeful about where things are going in my business/career and I just celebrated my five year anniversary so I think it's a pretty solid vision for the future.
I had no idea what I'd be doing in ten years when I was 19. With all the shit I've done in that time, I couldn't have made up my varied path if I tried. My main concern back then was making enough money during the summer so I didn't have to get a job during the semester in college. Honestly, I've never had a vision for what I'd be doing, and since masturbating beer taster isn't exactly a real money maker, I've always just kind of done things that worked out for one reason or another. I've been both lucky enough and skilled enough to take advantage of opportunities when they've come along, and right now, I'm doing pretty well. In ten years, who knows what I'll be up to. I'll either be quite a few rungs higher on the ladder where I am, or doing something else. I guess, as lame as it may seem, I don't have any aspirations beyond just being comfortable and doing what I need to do to maintain that. Anything beyond that is either bullshit or gravy.
Focus: I'm 25 right now, so I don't know how much thought was devoted to how my life would be like a decade from 15. By 18 I had a pretty good idea of what my college major was going to be (chemical engineering) but hadn't given much thought to post-graduation plans. I ended up hiring into my top choice job but life outside of work has definitely been different that what I expected. For one thing, I never thought that I would have gravitated to Crossfit or nutrition with such a passion. I also did not expect life outside of college to be as monotonous as it can be. Alt Focus: Tell years from now I plan on reaping the benefits of my hard work and effort put in at my current role. Hopefully this position is enough of a springboard that I can make a big move to the West Coast and start working in the food industry again. I plan on continuing with my fitness goals but I also want to focus on becoming a more well rounded individual. A wife and kids may in the picture as well.
10 years ago I was getting ready to open my own business. 2 hurricanes, 1 tornado, an economic meltdown, countless deaths of close family members and I'm rebuilding my life, living somewhere I swore I'd never live again. I did not see any of that coming. I don't even want to tempt fate by saying where I would like to see myself in 10 years.
Nowhere near what I thought I would be doing, yet in some ways not too far off. I planned on being a "successful" trader, having lived abroad for a bit, and owning a cool apartment in Chicago with a dog, and starting to consider getting married. In reality, I graduated in the middle of the economic downturn, traded for 6 months until my firm closed up shop, and bounced around to a variety of jobs before heading back to grad school. I've lived in Chicago the entire time and didn't make it to Europe, at least in a residential sense, like I thought. I still rent and that, coupled with a few other factors, precluded me from dog ownership (your rent choices in desirable buildings, especially high rises, decreases greatly with dogs over 25 lbs). However, I'm in Chicago, I'm going to be making over 6 figures by age 30 which was a foolish, arbitrary goal I set for myself at HS graduation, and I lived my single life largely how I wanted, and had romantic successes, physical and emotional, that I was really thirsty for as someone who graduated HS without having kissed a girl yet. Alt-Focus: 10 years? Shit man. I don't know and I'm at a point in my life where I've stopped trying to plan that out. I can say even if I am in Chicago still, there will likely have been a stop somewhere in between. Id say chances are very good that I'll be married, but past that, not even close to sure. I could move into my Dad's business, I could continue with CPG like I am now, or finally scratch my entrepreneurial itch.
At 18 I was an idiot. My parents taught me exactly nothing about planning or goal setting or anything resembling adulthood. They taught me to be a good person but that's about it. Other than that - work ethic? Pffft. Social graces? Y'all, I was on my own. So when I say I had NO idea where I'd be now, back then, I'm understating the seriousness of the situation. In retrospect I'm absolutely NOT surprised I wound up in two abusive relationships before I grew up into a normal person. No. I had no idea. I'm getting better though. I can plan at least two years in advance now.
I typed out a bunch about the whole 18 and 28 dynamic, but it was too depressing and personal, so I'll just go with the alt-focus. Ten years from now, my kid will theoretically be getting ready to graduate college. I will likely not be living where I am now as I am only here as part of the joint custody arrangement. My husband's company is based in Charlotte and if he is still with the company after my daughter goes off to college, he will likely want to move there to continue pursuing advancement. Nowadays when I'm not working, parenting, choring, all I want to do is relax with mindless things. I'm hoping 10 years from now, when I am an empty nester, I will do something more worthwhile with my time. Not necessarily something altruistic, but whatever I would find personally fulfilling.
Ten years ago I thought I was going to make a living as a sports journalist. I was well on my way (at least sports journalism part), as I was getting published regularly on the big NBA sites (there were only a few of them back then). A few weeks after I got offered my first paid gig -- complete with a press pass -- I was diagnosed with a brain tumor and my life took a 180. Turns out it was a complete blessing in disguise, because by the time I had recovered to the point where I was going to rejoin the journalism fray, RSS readers were really starting to take off. Now everyone and their cat runs a sports blog and the idea of making a living (much less making any substantive amount of money) as a sports journalist is a joke. Now, I'm in an administrative job I love, and 10 years from now I see myself being in the same company just higher up the ladder (I intend to retire from here). Throw in another kid, as after the second one I'm getting the snip snip because I told my wife I'm not paying for more than two, and that's pretty much all I could hope for. Hunting and fishing trips with my son will be fun. Basically the same life I have now, just more responsibility but personally more settled.
10 years ago I was planning to the weekend, I was planning on what I was going to do on that lovely Thursday-Sunday weekend. I never really thought about a decade later. I figured I'd be in some job plugging along, but I never had anything specific planned. I've always been more concerned about the short term than than the long haul. For some reason I'm neurotic about whats happening right now but not too concerned about what may happen. In 10 years I want to become more of an adult in some ways. Its about time I grow up, I'm almost 30 and going paycheck to paycheck and dating intermittently is getting old. Still love meeting new people and new girls, but God help me, I'll be looking for something more long term and sustainable. Not sure what it is about getting old, but it seems like avoiding uncertainty is a new goal versus having that being a fun part of life. I never want to get old mentally, I still want to be excited to play hockey or hang out with my friends in 10 years. I want to be going out on the weekends and still try to enjoy the moment and get out. Not sure I ever see myself doing nothing for a weekend and being content.
10 years ago I thought I would be very wealthy by now, I was flipping houses and doing home loans and making a killing, life was easy and to make things better my girlfriend made a lot of money we partied all the time and traveled and I thought we would just continue to kill it and retire early. I was barely 30 and nothing could possibly go wrong. Cue things going wrong. Once the partying started to catch up to me I decided to take a trip to rehab, luckily if you can pay cash for it the let you right in and fresh out of rehab I continued buying and selling real estate, no way I could loose because I was sober. The economy started to crash and my real estate investments went bad very bad, rents dropped, all 7 of my tenants moved out due to SB1070 that profiled uninvited guests of the US, and the mortgage market dried up and I pretty much lost it all. Luckily I was engaged to my now wife who made a lot of money but they closed her office after 18 years so we had that going for us. We had to make some major lifestyle changes and start over. 10 years from now I hope to not have made the same mistakes I made the last 10 years, that and I want to have killed a lot more stuff.
Focus: 10 years ago I was working two minimum wage jobs doing 60-70 our a week. Had no idea what I wanted to do. About 5 months before this I was starting my 3rd year in University working towards my B.Sc. in computer science. I still love doing a lot of the same stuff for fun, but I woke up one day and said fuck this I cant do this stuff all day every day, so I quit packed up and went home. In august for 2005, I got a call from a place I used to work in the summer doing deliveries asking if I wanted to be a front counter parts person. I never even thought about this as a job or career it never interested my in the slightest. I worked there for 8 years before starting my current job. Now 10 years later I love it, and am really thankful how everything worked out. Alt-Focus: 10 years from now I am assuming I will still be in the same field. Don't know if I will still be at the same job or not. There is the possibility for this little town of 12k people to just blow up if any number of major LNG projects get the green light. And they will all need people to run there warehouses. Hope to still be married, my daughter will be 12, and will probably have a 9 year old by then.