Project 365: Day 92–30 Years From Now

I’m out of things to write about today. So I’m taking inspiration from Johnson today and I’m going to try and write about the things I want to be doing 30 years from now. They’re simple things. Here’s what I want to be doing 30 years from now.

1. Finding my niche. If I am not still working my full time job (which may be the case), I want to find my niche and own it. Could be anything — reading to children, perhaps. Just something that I might take up for a large part of the day that makes me happy and gives me a sense of adding value.
2. Be okay with being alone. My mother retired a few months ago and my father did five years ago. They’ve gotten extremely co-dependent over the last 3 months, in a way that one finds it difficult to exist without the other. At other times, it’s me they want with them. In contrast, I’ve also seen old people who can exist independently of their spouses. I don’t want to be a burden on my partner or the kid(s). It is the last thing I’d want, and I like the fact that I can be on my own for a while at least. Being in an unknown place can be difficult and scary but hopefully it won’t come to that. I feel old age slowly brings in a fear of dying alone, at least that’s what I feel my parents are afraid of, even though they’re in the pink of health. If I live to a ripe old age, I want to die in my sleep. Quick and easy, before I know it.
3. Not worry about money and where it will come from when my partner and I have stopped working full time.
4. Be healthy enough — to go for walks by myself. Walks help me clear my head. I’d like to be healthy enough to go off to places on my own.
5. Have raised decent human beings for children. It’s the one thing I’m afraid of, more than most things. Raising terrible kids. Worse still, I’m mortally afraid of having a boy and raising him wrong. Men, through most parts of the world, and in India are somehow raised to believe they are better than women, that they somehow have more rights than women. As a girl, I was raised to think of myself as ‘less than boy’, implicitly rather than being told explicitly. I don’t think I can ever be okay if my son (if, hypothetically I had a son) turned out that way — especially since his father will never be that kind of person. Conversely, my daughter could never be subject to patriarchal bullshit. She will be her own person, and will not confine to archaic standards of behaviour. Sexism and entitlement aside, I would like the kid to be optimistic and a kind person, especially to animals. I’d probably hurt my own kid if he / she ever hurt an animal.

That’s all for today! Let me know what you want to be doing 30 years from now.