26

Five years. 26. That’s always seemed like “The Age” to me, for some reason. The age to be done with school, undergrad and grad. Or the age to be happily situated in a career. The age to get married. The age to have your life figured out.

If I have my life figured out by 26 it will be a miracle. A God given miracle. I’m finishing up undergrad in the next seven months, and my big plan for after I walk across the stage in December is have a best seller published and a loft in SoHo. I should probably think of some back ups.

I’ve toyed with the idea of grad school, but I don’t want to teach. I have no desire to “share” my “knowledge” of writing to kids maybe two years younger than me. Most of the time I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. My poetry teacher told me though, once, that an MFA is basically a two to three year span of time to focus on writing, without an other distractions. And if you get into a fully funded program? Drink to that.

Sometimes I think about diving into the work force. Journalism has always interested me, despite my sporadic writing for the college newspaper and my refusal to major in it. I could be the Lois Lane or Zoe Barnes of investigative reporting, without the Supermans or speeding trains. In five years I could be happy doing that.

But only if I could still write what I want. And that’s the issue, really. I want the span of uninterrupted time to write without the teaching, and I want the investigative writing without the deadlines and assignments. If I could have a best seller on shelves by the time I’m 26, that would be swell. Or, you know, just a well off book. I could live like a starving artist, no problem. I like ramen noodles. I don’t require a lot of upkeep.

Maybe I don’t have to panic about it though. All my life I’ve thought there’s a certain order of things: college, job, family. But everyone has their personal timeline, and maybe it’s okay that I don’t have a set idea for where I will be at the end of December. Maybe I’ll give myself a year out of these five to figure out what’s going to happen to me, and maybe out of the year will come something wonderful.