My Life In (or After) 10 years… 

(or “I’ll try to avoid the ‘back in my day’ and ‘get off my lawn’ jokes.”) 

((EDIT:  I went and edited this thing when I should have been satisfied, but some of it actually got better.  Plus, I needed a real ending.  Mind you, discovering last minute that I had YET to Officially POST ONLINE to the BLOG the Online Blog Post in question did not do wonders for my confidence.))

This is one of the final assignments for Composition class at ITT Tech, done first as a simple Word Document before being copied into a blog post, and is possibly the assignment one that stymied (or rather “that I let stymie”) me the most.  For as long as I can recall I have been hesitant to say for absolute certain what I wanted to be doing in future.  I could say with more assurance what I did not to do in the future, or with a little less assurance what I’ve thought or even daydreamed of doing.  The latter includes a list I made later in my teens than I’d care to admit, and consisted primarily of special skills that would be too time-and-likely-money-consuming to acquire for almost anyone other than fictional, orphaned, maladjusted billionaires from Gotham City.  But as for more serious plans or goals, the immediate reason I’d say that I’ve never set much in stone would be to say it was like trying to predict the future, and therefore not 100% assured.  But that reason didn’t come off as solid enough even as I wrote it, and a more likely multi-part reason is that I’ve never completely sure what I truly wanted, what goals I felt were necessary, and whether or not I had what it took to meet such goals.  I’m using this assignment to finally confront that, state some options, list some possible goals both old and new, as well as some hopefully realistic wants and opportunities. 

There will be a break or two from being too serious, however, and the first of those is the first thing that I recently realized that I absolutely knew would be part of my future and that I would very much want to work towards obtaining:  Bookshelves. 

(Seriously, I have several dozens of books and while I’m not getting them by the metric ton and still have many to read, nor am I an immensely intelligent bibliophile, they’re a medium that I’m not giving up on and hope to add to someday.  Ditto for DVDs.  So some stable bookshelves not broken up into too many smaller, squarer shelves, and to hell with those extra fancy curved or diagonal designer shelves that seem to be a dare to gravity from quirky designers and others that don’t realize that they’re asking for it.  Glad that’s out of my system.) 

More seriously, I would like to improve my ability to concentrate, organize information, and use it quicker and more efficiently.   I find that it takes me more time than is convenient to get that creative urge or incentive, sort thoughts and ideas, break through the near-obligatory creative or “writer’s” block, and get it typed out in order in what will turn out to be more than one fell swoop.  In the past 20 or so minutes, I’ve typed this paragraph and the one before it, gone back and re-typed several lines all over the assignment to shorten, clarify or detail them, plus I’ve gone through a couple of Google Image pages of bookshelves before deciding to wait until this post was copied-and-pasted to the blog(s) before adding pictures.  For the hour before that I was moving slowly trying to figure out what Future Plans were that I would write about before finally figuring out why I hadn’t done much of that before.  I would prefer that the ideas come a little easier and that putting them into a written form would be way easier, from the decision-making to the typing skills that occasionally fail me.  To say nothing of putting aside the distractions around me at home or in class, from the research where I could go to far afield to the classmates chatting behind me who I really wish would BE QUIET. 

As I'm sure eluded to, the most difficult part of this assignment for me would be writing about my academic, professional and personal future a decade from now.  For starters, I find some non-mathematical, word-based schoolwork more difficult than other types to at least begin, and taking what feels like a longer-than-need-be time to truly absorb some concepts gets frustrating and thus future schooling fills me with a nagging doubt or uncertainty. But at least as significant is that I have studied, worked in or just been interested by a few professional fields and have wondered if I should shift focus to either a different profession, or even consider combining interests.  I originally began studying Computer Information Services and Computer Science back in college in a time before smartphones, but after following a friend to a hands-on course at a local television station I soon changed my major to Communications Broadcasting, eventually leading to a specialty school and a 15 year career working in what I would call the Operations of two separate television stations. After being laid off and finding it difficult to get back into that field, I turned to Information Systems feeling I needed to expand my skills in a more technical world, but the field of Broadcast Operations (my phrasing) is still something I wonder if I can return to.  Then there’s a recurring interest in something like research or even library work, albeit vaguer and not necessarily much of a major driving force.  (“But still…”, he added.)  So should I focus solely on the Informational side, should I eventually retrain in Broadcasting and work my way back into that field with similar or totally different much technical know-how, or should I try my hand at Library Science with a computer knowledgeable background. My mind has wandered between the possibilities.

I do know that I wish to improve myself within the following years in temperament, observation, recall, human interaction and even snappy repartee that to be honest I haven't exactly been working at.  I hope to express myself better with the first line rather than by rewriting the line the third or fourth time, or going home after a conversation only to say "THAT's what I should have said."  Granted, maybe more people should step back from what they will say or write before it gets past the "Speak Out Loud" and/or "Publish" phases, but they shouldn't take as annoyingly long as I feel it often does. 

            So suffice to say that I have not yet planned the next ten years much at all.  At most I have considered some possibilities, tried to sift them from the daydreams, shoved the regrets into that metaphorical pile that I should really should clean out more often, but I have decided that I would rather not have one of those fancy flying cars.  Small decisions like that make me realize that I'm not hopelessly stupid, despite some "best" efforts to feel that way.  So I'll start slowly planning the closer future under the heading "onward and thinking upward", until I decide to change that into something funnier.

First picture at Blogger!  Both Spideys © Marvel Comic/Entertainment,
while Toyfare material ©Wizard Entertainment or whatever they are now.

Thank you and/or congratulations for getting through what even I thought was a tad self-indulgent.