Oops. I was doing really well there for a while, blogging a couple of days in a row. Then I got busy. Sorry about that.
I leave for England in 8 days. How is that possible? Half of my desk is covered with things-I'm-bringing-to-England. I've made a preliminary packing list. It's kind of starting to feel a little bit real. But only a little, because even up until the moment I step onto the plane, it will still be unreal to me that I'll be thousands of miles away in another country, on another continent, starting the new phase of my life, which I've been planning for SO long.
It's odd, though, how as I begin this year, I'm already thinking of next year. I spent the last month-and-a-half sorting through all my belongings, from childhood toys to college notebooks, and in addition to making me feel hopelessly materialist and sentimental, that process also gave me a very strong desire to start establishing a space where I can live with all my objects, where I can hang the pictures I never hung up or admire the books that are currently packed carefully into cardboard boxes.
So I thought I'd do a little 5-year plan here, before I set off, a list of things I want to achieve in the next few years. In no particular order, I'd like to:
Move into a house with friends.
Own a cat.
Earn a master's degree.
Start earning my keep.
Get something published (could be a story, a few articles, a book).
Write something (could be a novel, a series of short stories....This should probably come before getting something published).
Travel to New Zealand and/or Scandinavia
Start playing around with my video camera again.
Start playing music again.
Become a more accomplished seamstress and sew more of my own clothes.
Become more fit.
I guess that's it for now. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is literally all I know about what I want to do after this year. Who needs plans, anyway?
Right now, I'm focusing on this year, about which I'm both very excited and pretty nervous. I'm starting to get intermittent bouts of butterflies in my stomach. I'm an odd combination of ambitious and not adventurous. I'm both curious and timid. Which is why I'm going to England, not, say, India.
So even though I have a very strong nesting instinct, which is making me dream of a nice big house with a nice big kitchen and a library and a workshop...I'm going to indulge my wanderlust a little before I give into my nestlust.
My next post may be coming to you from England. Maybe I'll even start posting some pictures of my travels here. Who knows? I'm practicing exploring and not knowing.
I really like your list of next year plans: they are the groundwork for life beyond next year, and are very detailed without being too specific. I think many of those would be on my list as well! (like, all of them...except the video stuff...) It's fun to think about :)
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