About the Time I Had a Crisis Because Someone Asked “Where Do You See Yourself in 5 Years?”
How DARE you ask me that while I’m emotionally fragile and mid-season 4 Star Wars Rebels rewatch?
You know those questions that seem harmless? Like “how are you?” or “what’s new?” or “do you want to split dessert?”
This was NOT one of those questions.
This was violence.
This was a war crime served up with a smile and a glass of ojo rojo with a shot of tequila.
“Where do you see yourself in five years?”
Where do I see myself?? Babe, I can’t even see myself making it to Friday without fully unraveling like a ball of yarn in a kitten daycare (although - kitten daycare does sound fun!).
Let's break it down. In five years, I’ll be just two months shy of 41.
FORTY-ONE.
That’s, like, a number. A real adult number. The kind of age where your back makes noises when you sit down and you start saying things like "we should leave early to avoid traffic” instead of “we should stay later to avoid traffic”.
Will I still be working in influencer marketing in gaming? Will I still be hunting down cozy creators who cry over Stardew Valley cows or creators who understand game lore? Will I finally understand what the metaverse is? (Probably not.)
Will I have a partner? Like, a real one, not just someone I trauma bond with for three weeks and then ghost because he says “crypto” too many times. Will I fall in love at a mezcal bar in Oaxaca? Will it be toxic? (Let’s be honest. Yes.)
And let’s address the darkest truth of all:
My dog.
My best friend. My soulmate. My constant.
HE MIGHT NOT BE HERE.
Are you trying to emotionally assassinate me with this question? Because it’s working.
Will I get another dog? Will it feel like betrayal? Will it be smaller? Will it have a passport?
WILL I START TRAVELING WITH MY DOG LIKE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO BOOK “PET-FRIENDLY AIRBNBS” AND PACK THEIR DOG A LITTLE CARRY-ON?
Speaking of travel—will I finally move to Spain or Greece?
Will I have convinced my niece, age five, and I guess, her parents, to become my accomplice in Mediterranean escapism and go island-hopping in search of her future funcle (that’s fun-uncle, and yes he has a boat)?
Will she be bilingual and judge me for always speaking English and rarely speaking Spanish? Will I cry about it over a glass of overpriced wine in a beautiful Greek island while she makes fun of me for still listening to My Chemical Romance?
And what about my free time?
Will I still be playing Disney Dreamlight Valley for 7 straight hours on Saturdays in a depressive-dissociative loop? (Statistically, yes and I probably won’t have even finished the game by then.)
Will I still cry-watch Rogue One and then A New Hope immediately after like an emotionally unstable adult with a Jedi complex?
Will I finally stop buying plants I cannot keep alive?
Will I still confuse financial stability with buying flight deals at 3am because “life is short”?
And then there’s the big one. The scary one.
What if I’m... dead?
No but like, what if this whole five-year plan thing is a cosmic joke and I get hit by a rogue electric scooter in Rome while chasing a plate of pasta? Because out of all the potential scenarios I just listed, this might just be the most realistic one.
WHO.
KNOWS.
What I do know is this: I’ll probably still be questioning everything, spiraling dramatically at a café, and writing about it with too many em dashes.
Maybe I’ll have grown. Maybe I won’t.
But five years from now, I hope I still laugh at my own jokes, love my life (even the chaos), and have at least one pet, one friend, and one reason to get out of bed—even if that reason is a new expansion pack.
