My 10 year plan

I am a planner. I plan everything I do. Seldom do things go as planned but I keep planning anyways. I was asked recently where I saw myself in 10 years. It was a simple question but one I didn’t have an answer to. It all comes back to change. Changes in my life that have a huge effect on my 10 year plan. And again I find Belle opening up a lot of doors for me.

My life was set. I decided a very long time ago to put my needs aside for the sake of those that depend on me. I accepted the fact that my life was not my own and that my needs were to be placed on the back burner until a time that my life once again becomes all about me. It was an easy decision really and so that has been me for the past 14 years. I work, I tend to the home and I take care of others. It was cut and dry, a plan that was simple. That is when I stopped searching for answers. I stopped wondering what I wanted out of life. I stopped wishing things were different and accepted them as they were. It made life easy though. I became a coward. I bailed out on life, 14 years of just going through the motions.

I am a strong believer in the adage that everything happens for a reason. I have learned through life’s upsets that you must find the positive in everything thrown your way. And this is where I find myself today. I was not ready for my life to turn around. It was not part of my 10 year plan. But it is what it is. I have no control over it, it is a change I was not prepared for but now I must find the positive. Sure, I could sit here and feel sorry for myself, wishing things were different and not to say that that thought didn’t cross my mind, it’s just not my style. I don’t want to be a coward anymore. I am not going to bail out on life, my life.

So, my 10 year plan. Is it really necessary to have a 10 year plan? For me, yes. I need goals to be set. I am at a time in my life where I feel the need to be working towards something. I am a realist, so my goals would never be unattainable but I do like a challenge. I am ready for that in my life. I need to go after things I never thought I deserved. Go after things I never thought I would want or need, go after things that I envy in others. In doing this I know I will need to take risks along the way. And that will be my first challenge.

In 10 years I want to be strong. I want to be confident in my life, safe and secure. I want to be doing things for me. But how do I get there? How do I stop being a coward and go after what I want in life? I have realized over the past little while that I cannot do it on my own. I look at my life and what I have accomplished in my 32 short years and I pat myself on the back. I am proud for what I have overcome and I can say I did it all on my own. That is a great feeling, to be able to say I did it and I did it all on my own. But I do not have anyone to share that with because I never let anyone help me along the way. What good is a pat on the back when there is noone there to recognize it? Noone to say “I am proud of you”, noone to say “You fought like hell and you made it out on top”. I don’t need anyone to do that for me, but it would be nice to have had someone there to take notice.


So my 10 year plan will involve people. I don’t want to go through life feeling like I do not need anyone anymore. I am not sure just how much I will allow myself to lean on these people but I do hope that by letting them in I will learn to trust. I love to write. In the next 10 years I plan to pursue that dream. I am not expecting to be on the best seller’s list by then, but I do want to go after that dream. Writing this blog has been so much fun. It has been something in my life this past year that has been personally rewarding. I have learned a lot of myself and I want to expand on that. I don’t know where it will take me but I do know I have to find out.

I want to travel. Not necessarily to grand places like Paris necessarily but to go tobogganing in Maine, visit Alcatraz in San Francisco, be a part of a powwow in Montana, see a Habs game in Montreal, climb the tree tops in Costa Rica, ski in the Alps, visit my home town in Sooke, B.C., spend a summer in a motor home touring warm hot places stopping in campgrounds for campfires and hikes through state parks. There is so much out there I want to do and see. Simple, but wondrous things.

It will be a plan that will come together because of Belle. She has opened my eyes to a whole new world. New experiences and a new found zest for life. I feel alive again because of her and while I know her time in this business will be short lived, there will always be that bit of her inside of me, pushing me at times I want to bail and be the driving force behind going after what I want in life.