Monday December 23, 2002

Is this what the "future" was supposed to be?

It is December 23rd. Sort of, anyway. I haven't gone to sleep yet, so I still consider the 23rd to be tomorrow, but whatever. It's the 23rd. The twenty-third of December, two-thousand and two. Almost 2003. Wow. Seriously though, 2003... when I was a llittle kid, I used to think the two-thousands were so far away. I always pictured the world entering into the Jetson's age by now, everyone flying around on airborn automobiles that replaced the old four-wheelers (I'm still waiting for my robo-maid too). The world was supposed to be so advanced by this time. Sure, there's the internet (which I am obviously addicted to), and the UN is threatening to evolve into the new world order that revelationists have warned us about, but where's all the other stuff? We were supposed to have made contact with aliens by now. We were supposed to have achieved world peace by now. I was supposed to have figured out my life's plans by now. But none of that looks like it will be happening anytime soon. No aliens, no peace, no plans.

Actually, with the plans thing, I think I'm starting to go backwards. As a kid, I knew what I wanted to be; I was going to go to college, become a marine biologist, follow sharks around the waters of Australia, earn lots of money, and find true happiness... wham, bam, thank you ma'am. I remember calling some guy from Case Western Reserve University and asking him all sorts of questions about marine biology (and this, before the age of ten). He spent a good 45 minutes with me on the phone, and I was a happy little girl. My goals were all set. But, to me, even though I had figured out my life's plans, all that stuff seemed so far away that I never thought I'd actually ever get there. Either time was going to stay still, or I was going to die or something, because 2003 was never really supposed to be here. And now that it is here, my plans aren't as clear as they were when I was nine.

Earning lots of money and finding true happiness are still on my agenda, but now that I'm faced with the task of achieving those goals, I don't know quite where to start. This stuff was a lot easier when I had pigtails. I never had to think about where to start becoming rich or finding true happiness --I just always figured it would happen. But now I feel like I've just walked into a tornado-tossed bedroom that my mom is making me clean. Where the hell do I begin? With the piles of clothes on the floor that multiply faster than loaves of bread at a Jesus luncheon? Maybe with the random junk stuffed underneath the bed? Where? Whenever I did have to clean my room, I always started with the closet --but what part of life qualifies as the closet? I hope it doesn't involve psychoanalysis.

I wonder if my friends are getting weird like me too.