Melvin and Me, Part 7: A Case of the NowWhats

I've never been a fan of the stereotypical interview question "where do you see yourself in five years?".  In the first place, it always sounded like one hell of a trick question.  Are you supposed to prove your loyalty to a company that might not hire you?  If you avoid talking about work and your life goals, how do you avoid hackneyed platitudes and artificial generic-tudes?  And certainly they don't want me to be too specific--it's like the call and response of "How are you?" in some senses.  I'm cognizant that there is an off chance that a lot of things could run into some kind of hiring bias.  So I slur my way through these kinds of questions, stating a "safe" goal, like traveling, or to write more or, yes, slipping into a cliche of some kind.  

However, the real reason these make me really uncomfortable is because I'm acutely aware of what can change in a very short period of time.

I was reviewing my Christmas Letter entry from 2016, starting into 2017, and thinking that clearly I had no idea what was going to happen.  I get the same feeling watching our wedding video on our anniversary, that neither of us had any idea how soon everything was going to go catastrophically wrong.  I was relatively confident in December of 2016 that everything was on the up and up, but then again if a future me had said that I was going to be stuck with Melvin by the end of it, I probably could have believed it anyway, not because I expect the worst but because I'm aware of how fast things can change.  

I don't think I plan like a "normal" person.  Five years, I can't even fathom trying to plan that out.  There are so many variables, on top of whatever massive, quirky, alien of a surprise plops itself down in the middle of it.  How?  H0w could I make a five year plan?  My health situation has taught me to be flexible--and, Lord, has it taught me to be patient--and yet I feel this is a place where I'm so malleable that I cannot find direction anymore.  I can go with what I need to for survival's sake relatively fluidly, but I cannot figure out for the life of me how to direct that.  Worse still, I'm having a hard time figuring out where I want to.  

Actually, that's not really true.  I can be pretty good at deciding what I want.  I'm not talking about the "what do I want for lunch?" kinds of questions.  For the big ones, I can know pretty well what I want; it's more a matter of talking myself into it.  As it stands now, I do have a couple of things that feel right that I want to work toward, but as to when any of that might happen, well, that's where we get into the five-year conundrum.  These are long term goals, which require steady progresion and proper timing with other components in life, like paying off student debt.  The longer the stretch of time, the more variables are present and correlatively, the more places my health and other life adventures can break that apart.  Trying to predict and plan for all of these unknowns becomes so overwhelming that I shut it off for a little while longer.

When Andy and I were planning for Norway, there were a lot of things that we said we'd talk about after the trip, which included possibly moving amongst other things.   This was oddly comfortable, until, of course, we ultimately were faced with all of those same questions waiting for us on the other side.  The same thing happened again with my surgery, that there have been many things that we needed to wait to discuss until after Melvin was sorted out.  Well, I can only say "I'm still recovering" for so long before I have to pick up the same questions again.  

Where do I see myself in five years?  Now what?

There are safe, long term goals that I can make.  The best example I have of this is planning out our financial goals.  These are clear; these are linear.  I don't have a set time on when I'm doing what, but I know the order and the rough duration of the step I'm on.  I can estimate  roughly how long it would take us to do certain parts of it by that projection.  I can see tangible progress.  Barring unforeseen disasters, we'll pay off Andy's student loans this year, which considering how we started our marriage (fittingly, just over five years ago at this point) is pretty damn awesome.  And yet, the more I dwell on that, the more it makes my point, that I am a different person in a very different place, five years later.  

I recognize that everything is constantly changing, that there are seldom any certainties in this world (**something something "death and taxes" something**).  This is reflected in my speech to some extent, where I don't like to make absolutes, often adding in caveats like "barring unforeseen disasters" that I used a paragraph ago.  It drives Andy crazy from time to time.  I don't mean to avoid the simple yes or no question he asks me or avoiding giving him a definitive answer altogether, but I want to leave room for the unexpected or for elements to change as time goes by.  There's too much grey in the world to talk in black and white.

I feel old, not in a playful way, but deep in my bones, with everything Crohn's Disease has put me through.  I have mellowed out from the weight of it, especially from who I was ten years ago, but maybe some of that is just everyday maturing.  Trying to sort out how everything might fit together in another five years while simultaneously addressing how much has changed in five years, it just seems to typify the problem.  

So now we get the the real crux of it, that whether I know what I want isn't necessarily the question:  I'm afraid.  God, I'm so afraid.  And that confuses me, too.  I don't tend to think of myself as a fearful person.  I will talk to strangers, wear a hat even if I'm not sure it suits me, take a trip out of the country, give a presentation to a room full of people without much real anxiety.  What anxiety I have turns into a lot of careful preparation and planning, but usually on the healthy side of that.   And yet, I have a lot of anxiety, particularly in regards to my health that does hover strongly on the unhealthy side of things.

Why does this feel so different?  Why is planning out the trajectory of my life cause me to freeze instead of attacking it with a list and free stack of post-its?  Are Andy and I going to buy a house, and if so where?  Are Andy and I going to raise a family, and if so when?  Are Andy and I going to emigrate to Norway?  What if I decide to pursue nursing?  What about Andy's goals?  When am I going to sit down and write that blasted book?

There is no right order.  Just leaping.  Careful consideration into each step, research, but ultimately some leaping involved.  But here's the important part:  I don't have to leap now.  I don't have to leap any time soon at all, actually.  I'm already in a state of great change, adjusting to Melvin.  I probably shouldn't be making ANY big decisions right now.  I recognize that this discomfort, the state of the NowWhats, are mostly a reaction to this big life change.  And with these significant changes, this seems to shed a new light onto everything that I have been doing.  

So instead of a knee-jerk, big life change, I'm going to find those parts that I appreciate about where I am now.  There's a lot of soul-searching and elements of my health that I've been neglecting for the sake of survival.  I like my job and the people I work with; I like where we live and the activities I am returning to.  That's enough.  That's enough right now.