Five Years Time

I’m driving down 450 in the tiny black car I inherited from my brother, tapping my thumbs against the steering wheel to the beat of the music that’s playing. I’m on the way to the library to drop off some books and the playlist is a mix of songs that I made sometime in high school to listen to on bus rides, a strange combination of earnest indie and shameless pop that feels nostalgic in a way I can’t quite express.

As I turn in to the library parking lot, the song “Five Years Time” comes on. It’s by Noah and the Whale and it’s one of my very favorites. It’s about not quite knowing what the future holds, but knowing that it—whatever it is—is going to be good, even if it’s not quite what you expected.

I have a lot of imagined futures. Places I may go and things I may do and people I may meet. Adventures I could have and ideas I could fulfil. I have no idea if any of them will ever come true.

And that’s scary, right? The idea that no matter how hard you plan, how meticulously you try, there is no accounting for just how random life can be.

I think that’s why I like writing so much. It allows me to catalogue where I am and where I’m going. It lets me look back on what I’ve done and how I’ve grown and on all the places my life could have gone, all the choices I made that ended up with me, right here.

I’m sure there will come a day where these words embarrass me. The first post on this blog is from April 2013, which seems like a lifetime ago. In so many ways I’m not the same person I was when I wrote those words, but in so many ways I am. I’m growing, evolving, changing little by little.

“ In five years time I might not know you

In five years time we might not speak

In five years time we might not get along

In five years time you might just prove me wrong”

This is the start of my third year doing Blog Every Day November. It’s a stressful thing, but I love it. It forces me to be more thoughtful, more focused, more accountable to myself. I don’t know what this year’s posts will have in store. Last year they covered everything from religion to trains to happiness to sadness to turkey. I posted poems and short stories and essays about feelings. This year could be any of that or none of that. I guess I’ll see.

In five years time I don’t know where I’ll be. I don’t know what I’ll be doing or what twists and turns my life will have taken. But in five years time I’ll have a way to look back. To see where I came from, to see how I got there.