Day 18: Plans/dreams/goals you have

Plans, dreams, and goals. My favourite.

I suppose they work down in a hierarchy of likelihood, don't they? Dreams are the crazy things that we'd love to happen to us but probably never will. My dreams are to win lotto, travel the world, marry rich and spend my days as a trophy wife, or become dictator of the new world. Marrying rich is a possibility, I suppose, as is travelling the world. But I have no chance of winning lotto because I rarely buy a ticket and, alas, the world seems rather hostile towards dictatorships.

So I guess that brings me to goals. These are the more realistic ideals you set for yourself: the things you think you can achieve with some work. As I've said before, setting goals is not one of my strong suits. At least, not in the short term; I suppose long term goals are easier to think about. For one, I'd like to do a PhD. From there, I'm not sure. I wrote some time ago about how I feared I'd be trapped in the realm of academia. But now that I've found something I like, the idea of that isn't so scary. In fact, I think I'd actually like to work at a university. I don't know if I'm confident or interesting enough to teach - I suppose I could test it out by tutoring after I have my bachelor's degree (if they'll have me, of course) - but definitely research. I'd like to do something in the fields of artificial language or language pathology ... at this point anyway. I may find something more interesting along the way.

Then there's the family side of things. I want to get married to a nice man: older than me, with piercing blue eyes, a sharp mind, a brilliantly awful sense of humour, and a loving nature. I also want children, which is something I never thought I'd say. Inquisitive young minds ready to absorb everything, onto whom we can pass everything we know - god, I want that. I want a big (but not obnoxious) home, in a pleasant suburb not too far from everything. And I'd like all of this before I'm 35, thank you.

I'm also hoping to get active and fit. Maybe take up a sport, possibly get back into karate. Something. I'm aiming to expand my social circle, befriend a wider variety of people. My current groups of friends are quite different, sure, but in the end they're all white, liberal-ish, middle-class people. That's just not very exciting, is it?

And then plans? I suppose that's what you're planning to do to go about achieving your goals. Or just in general. Tomorrow, I plan to eat breakfast, go to uni, listen intently to my favourite lecturer and then ogle my attractive tutor. In the longer term I plan to go to the Hopman Cup, go a little bit over the top with the outfits and face paint in order to get noticed and get on television. I also plan to find a job because god knows I'm running out of money and desperately need one. Even further into the future, I plan to go on a Pacific island cruise, spent sunbathing on the top deck, blowing all my money in the casino on the lower deck, and trying to avoid dangerous creatures and tropical diseases in New Caledonia. But if I look ahead more generally? Well, I plan on doing brilliantly at uni, staying on to do Honours, then a PhD - or possibly a Masters in between if that's required. I plan on doing some volunteer work too, probably for some minor political groups I agree with and some social equality programs.

Basically, I plan to do whatever it takes to achieve my goals, perhaps even some of my dreams. And honestly, I think that's about as much as I can control for now. Whether or not all of those plans are followed through with ... well, that remains to be seen!