In ten years, my life is going to be completely different and exactly the same. I am still going to be me: a walking paradox--someone who is shy and outgoing, quiet and loud, caring and indifferent, empowered and unmotivated, and empathetic and apathetic. I am still going to be the person that I am, no matter what, but I’ll be better at it. I’ll be better at being me. Things are going to change--who I’m with, what I’m doing, where I am--but I never will. I’m excited for the exterior change that is about to unfold around me in the upcoming ten years. Through college, jobs, new people, new environments, and new experiences, I’ll be able to grow as a person.

One of the most important aspects of my life is my family. Through thick and thin, they’ve had my back and I’ve had theirs and nothing will ever be able to change that. In ten years, however, I won’t be living with them anymore. I’ll be on my own, hopefully planning to start a family of my own sometime in the near future of that distant one. I hope the bonds I currently have with my family will continue to strengthen. In ten years, we may not be physically near each other, but we’ll still always be around. The best part about family is that they don’t have to consist strictly of just my blood relatives. My friends are just as much family to me as my brother or mom. I hope that in ten years, I’ll still be friends with most, if not all of the people that I’m close to today. I hope that I’ll be able to hear their kids call me “Aunt” and that we’ll visit each other as often as we possibly can. In ten years, I’ll have made new friends through college and at my future job, and they’ll be family to me just as much as those aforementioned. I want my family to play as big a role in my life as possible without stripping me of my independence.

My future job. God, that seems so far away. But, college only lasts four years and I’ll hopefully be done with more than one novel by then and have at least one published. Being an author has been a lifelong dream of mine. I want to look back ten years from now to nine years ago from today and think of how proud my ten-year-old-self would be of my twenty-nine-year-old-self. I want to make enough money that I can live comfortably, if not a little bit luxuriously, and I want to provide my family, present and future, with everything that they could possibly want or need. I want my job to take me to all kinds of new places. I want to take part in book signings and book readings. I want my work to have touched the lives of others. I want to inspire others. I want to have an impact and effect on people I haven’t even met before.

Living in luxury would be nice but it isn’t totally necessary. My environment will obviously have an effect on everything the next ten years will bring, and I want to be able to soak up the beauty all around me. Ten years from now, I want to have traveled to places all over the world. I want to be able to say I’ve been here or there, but still be able to come back home to a roof over my head and my family by my side. I want a box full of memories from Rome or Prague or Tokyo or London or wherever else. I want it to be full of pictures and memorabilia from all of the places I’ve been. I want the world to be my environment. But, what I also want, is a home; I want a familiar place I can always come back to, a place full of memories and opportunities just as every place else is. Not only do I want my world to be my environment, but I also want my home to be my environment.

I guess I didn’t realize it when I started writing this, but everything I want my life to be in ten years ties together; my family, my job, my environment. There are things I want to change and there are things that I could never imagine being different. I hope my life in ten years is even better than I picture it in my head. I hope my life consists of everything I could ever hope for. But, most importantly, I hope I’m still the same person I am now, just better.