2 posts tagged “lessons”
I've given about ten minutes worth of thought to how I would like to spend these last few moments of my twenty-ninth year. I thought it would be nice to:
- Reflect on the last nine years, and figure out one important thing I learned each year (you know... the kind of important you can actually recall and articulate in a few minutes);
- Get another stanza of Prufrock under my belt (I have 44 lines left to go);
- Curl up next to my wonderful husband and sleep off a deep post-game weariness that I seem unable to shake.
Year 20: If I had a legacy, it would not be me. It would just be a legacy. In all probability, I would have very little control over what it was, and what it would mean, and to whom.
Year 21: Working in fashion retail is kind of like indentured servitude. Also, a 30% discount doesn't make something "so cheap it may as well be free."
Year 22: Sometimes, everything someone can be just isn't enough. Sometimes, love just goes away.
Year 23: There are some things that you just need to get out of your system. One way or another, they will have out.
Year 24: The death of someone you truly love can fundamentally change who you are. It can make you understand how very long forever is, and how much love you have that you might not have known about.
Year 25: You are given a space to fill... only so wide and so deep. It's daunting figuring out how best to fill it, especially since you don't know its dimensions.
Year 26: Everyone should try living in the city.
Year 27: When you meet the right person, you really do just know.
Year 28: Weddings are a total racket, and where your old world and new world meet can be a very scary place.
Year 29: It's important to feel down in your bones that time isn't waiting around for you, but it's totally okay to give yourself an extra week or so to memorize 44 lines. It's even okay not to get another stanza in before you go to sleep.
Obviously there's more... so much more... but a gal at thirty's door needs to get her beauty rest.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep... tired... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me."
In reverse order, which leaves us with a pseudo Blake book-end thing going on:
- The road of brownie excess leads to the palace of stomach ache.
- 10 hours of sleep does not a perky camper make.
- Hail storms, Australia, vampires, time travel, Mozart, martyrs, sangria and office scandals can all fit into one dream, though perhaps not as cohesively as one would like.
- Men like facial hair. Women do not.
- If you leave your dry cleaning in an out-of-the-way spot, you will forget it.
- I need to save $4,486,000 in order to retire comfortably.*
- I'm on target to save about 25% of what I need to retire comfortably.*
- My Guitar Hero muscles need some conditioning.
- The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
* If you would like to similarly depress yourself with your imminent destitution, check out the Fidelity myPlan Retirement Quick Check.
