The Next Ten Years

When I was little all the way up to high school I would constantly be planning things, whether it was my next birthday party or where I wanted to be in ten year and what I thought my dreams were. I was in desperate need of some control in a world that was far too big for me to adapt in. My mom would always stop me and say "Rilee try to stay in the moment, be in the present" because I was always wishing I was somewhere else or at some other point in my life. Come now, I am 25 years old and I cant imagine trying to plan anything for my life.

I am at the stage and age in my life that all that planning, all the time spent thinking about where I could be in my late 20's is here. And honestly, I am here. I am doing what I always thought I wanted. I am living in a city, I am working towards being an event sales director in the form of an entry level position. I even started my own business based off watermelons in order to be able to help others on their special day while I get my wedding experience fix. I am doing what all those years I thought I wanted to do and more. But now, I don't have a desire to think of the next ten years, I have no desire to plan what my life wants or should look like. I have found myself to be in this body that finally feels like my own, but have no dreams of where I want to go with it.

The 20's are a weird time in life. You're mixed within a cluster muck of officially being an adult, being told that this is the time to explore yourself and the world, while being grounded by realty that you have been socially brainwashed your whole life to think that you are special, yet to fit in a world that can easily function without you. That expression of a rat race, or the Ginny pigs spinning wheel has a point. in the your 20s you have to hustle, and most the time you feel like your are sliding backwards on a hill that your trying to climb. You did the whole college thing, dated a few people and got a job like you were supposed to. Now what! If your like me, you have friends who have been married and introducing babies on their social medias, you have your friends who found their purpose and are achieving what they have always wanted and then you have you.

What if what I want isn't what I want, and if that's true, what do I want? Maybe I am too self aware and introspective, but the next ten years don't hold dreams anymore, they hold more loss, more decisions and more confusion. If someone asks me what I want out of life, it isn't all the stuff I used to believe. All I can manage to come up with is I want to be loved and to love in a deep way, I want to emphasize the uncut moments of joy that exist, I want to not feel restricted or obligated and to feel the ability to expand and grow. Honestly right now, I just want to be and try to get up on time to go to work in the morning. Not sure if getting up and going to a decent job at 7:30 in the morning is truly what I want, but it is where I am at right now.

Nonetheless, the next ten years has no room to exist or even dream about as I am so entangled in just being 25. All I know is if I cant make these years where I am the best, with the family I have alive and the friends I have by my side, what is there to dream about? I have hurt enough, I have been fully loved, and I have experienced beautiful people and places. I am lucky to be alive, but most of the time I feel like I am living to just survive.

I have learned I cant control everything in life, hell I cant control most of anything, I can only do my best. But whatever my next ten years hold, I just don't want to feel an ounce of regret.

So here is to 25, hustling to survive, chasing the moments of feeling alive, and not putting weight on all of the decision I make. My current point is to just be where I am at with the occasional motivation call from my parents that I am doing fine.