Looking back, 2020, mistakes I've got many...

...and the truth is that I'd probably do it again.

Day 9. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Okay, so in ten years, it will be 2021, not 2020, but in case you haven't noticed, I've been using song lyrics for all the titles here, and these, from '2020' by The Herd perfectly sum up my attitude towards questions such as these.

The answer is, in ten years, I have no idea where I'll be. I know where I'd like to be (working as an academic or librarian, hopefully still with M, hopefully still in Britain or Ireland, hopefully with a couple of children, hopefully happy with my life), but my life up to this point has so successfully confounded my expectations that I know how twisty and turny and unexpected everything can be. For example, ten years ago, when I was sixteen, I had a Life Plan. This is how I expected my life to unfold:

16-18: Be in a relationship with Serious Highschool Boyfriend.
18: Have heart broken by Serious Highschool Boyfriend, resulting in trust issues and a reluctance to form relationships.
18-22: Go to university and study Arts (humanities), with honours in English literature.
19: Meet Serious University Boyfriend, whose sheer awesomeness would cure all my trust issues.
22: Begin working as a journalist at an Australian newspaper.
23: Get married to Serious University Boyfriend.
25: Have first child.

This, instead, is what happened:

16-20: Have Epic, Unrequited Crush on Unattainable Guy. Have several short-term relationships in an attempt to extricate self from said Unrequited Crush.
18-22: Go to university and study Arts, with honours in English literature.
18-present: Work as a book-reviewer for an Australian newspaper.
22-23: Have a miserable time working as a sub-editor for an Australian newspaper. Another relationship that never got off the ground.
23-24: MPhil in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge. Disastrous short-term relationship which ended in such unspeakable horror that I was in counselling for a year about it.
24-present: PhD in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge. Short-term relationship with a friend of mine that ended due to problems that were too great for either of us to fix.
25-present: Relationship with the rather wonderful M.
26: Currently studying on exchange at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

So yeah, my Life Plan was naïve, and the product of the books I read as a teenager, but what strikes me most about it is how neat it is. And how messy is what really happened in comparison. Aside from studying Arts with honours in English literature, nothing on either list matches! And the Life Plan is so linear, with each step flowing on from the one preceding, whereas my real life was full of stops and starts and u-turns.

And yes, some people might look at my life over the past ten years and see mistakes, but all I see is my life, joy and pain and all. They may be mistakes, but they're my mistakes, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

And I really have no idea what my life will look like in ten years.

( the other days )

Looking back, 2020, mistakes I've got many...

...and the truth is that I'd probably do it again.

Day 9. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Okay, so in ten years, it will be 2021, not 2020, but in case you haven't noticed, I've been using song lyrics for all the titles here, and these, from '2020' by The Herd perfectly sum up my attitude towards questions such as these.

The answer is, in ten years, I have no idea where I'll be. I know where I'd like to be (working as an academic or librarian, hopefully still with M, hopefully still in Britain or Ireland, hopefully with a couple of children, hopefully happy with my life), but my life up to this point has so successfully confounded my expectations that I know how twisty and turny and unexpected everything can be. For example, ten years ago, when I was sixteen, I had a Life Plan. This is how I expected my life to unfold:

16-18: Be in a relationship with Serious Highschool Boyfriend.
18: Have heart broken by Serious Highschool Boyfriend, resulting in trust issues and a reluctance to form relationships.
18-22: Go to university and study Arts (humanities), with honours in English literature.
19: Meet Serious University Boyfriend, whose sheer awesomeness would cure all my trust issues.
22: Begin working as a journalist at an Australian newspaper.
23: Get married to Serious University Boyfriend.
25: Have first child.

This, instead, is what happened:

16-20: Have Epic, Unrequited Crush on Unattainable Guy. Have several short-term relationships in an attempt to extricate self from said Unrequited Crush.
18-22: Go to university and study Arts, with honours in English literature.
18-present: Work as a book-reviewer for an Australian newspaper.
22-23: Have a miserable time working as a sub-editor for an Australian newspaper. Another relationship that never got off the ground.
23-24: MPhil in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge. Disastrous short-term relationship which ended in such unspeakable horror that I was in counselling for a year about it.
24-present: PhD in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge. Short-term relationship with a friend of mine that ended due to problems that were too great for either of us to fix.
25-present: Relationship with the rather wonderful M.
26: Currently studying on exchange at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

So yeah, my Life Plan was naïve, and the product of the books I read as a teenager, but what strikes me most about it is how neat it is. And how messy is what really happened in comparison. Aside from studying Arts with honours in English literature, nothing on either list matches! And the Life Plan is so linear, with each step flowing on from the one preceding, whereas my real life was full of stops and starts and u-turns.

And yes, some people might look at my life over the past ten years and see mistakes, but all I see is my life, joy and pain and all. They may be mistakes, but they're my mistakes, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

And I really have no idea what my life will look like in ten years.

( the other days )