In which I think aloud, as it were. Even though it’s actually typing. (Writing. Whatever.)

Let me admit first that I’ve never had a five-year plan. I’m the kind of creature who takes things as they come, and at any job interview where I’ve been asked, “Where do you see yourself in five years, Michelle?” I’ve always answered, “I really have no idea. I never think that far ahead.”

(I manage to get hired anyway because in spite of my blatantly wrong interview answers I give fantastic interview, you SO would not believe how articulate and friendly I can be under fire.) (Actually, I often answer interview questions totally wrong, like, “I know what I’m supposed to say here, but you seem like you’d appreciate honesty more” so blah blah blah. That way they know I know how to play the game but am choosing not to.) (Or something. ) (It works for me more often than not, at any rate.) (Moving on.)

So we’ve established that I don’t have any idea what I’ll be doing in five years. I’m more attached to a state of change than one of stability, and if I’m brutally honest, I am – or at least have been – more afraid to make statements that would later prove to make a liar of me than to have no plan at all.

So while I’ve never had a five year plan, I do have a new two year plan! This is a work in progress, of course, and these are just the basics I’ve been tossing around, but hey: it’s something.

First, the debt: I have a whole bunch of debt to pay off. As I’ve mentioned before, all the bills from the marriage (except, like, the propane bill) were in my name, and if I ever want to be able to get a checking account or rent an apartment ever again I’ll just have to deal with it, fair or not.

Add to that last November’s quasi-emergency surgery bills, and the money I borrowed from my mom to get from Fairfield to Walla Walla (including the funds the jeep sucked down its soon-to-explode gullet back in Wyoming), and it’s a hefty chunk of change.

I’m paying the surgeon every month, and sending my mom money, and I finally signed up for a debt reduction program. Long story short, I should be debt-free two years from now (not counting my student loans) and once again able to do grown-up things like get apartments, and jobs where they do credit checks as part of pre-employment screening, and utilities, and checking accounts… It’ll be awesome, that day will, when it comes.

Second, the job: Tech support is just fine and dandy, and I’ll stay with my current employer as long as I can stand it (because my co-workers are awesome and it’s only twelve blocks from where I live) but there’s zero opportunity for growth in this company and eventually I’ll get brutally bored. I won’t want to, I just will. In anticipation of this distant event, I’ve been thinking about what I’ll do then.

Let’s say I’ll have a car when it happens: will I just go work at another ISP, maybe in engineering, and only survive there a year or so before I get bored again? (And if so, what will happen when I run out of ISPs? Can I do one- or two-year stints at ISPs for the rest of my life? Will they hire me if they know I’ll only last that long?)

Or will I go back to temping, which I’ve always been secretly fond of because it’s change-based? But exactly how satisfying a career would that turn out to be, doing temp office work in my 40’s? Temping is temporary, it’s even in the name. Is that what grown-ups do?

It occurs to me that I never managed to develop a career: I work for money; I work because I have to. I do not now nor have I ever worked for the sheer love of it, and no matter how hard I try to imagine The Perfect Job I cannot do so because I take issue with the fundamental concept of working for a living in the first place: in a nutshell, I never feel like I’m really living when I’m working full-time but rather more like I’m getting my soul crushed in a machine. (Holy shit, somebody stop me before I get started on that whole rant.)

Now while working has its downsides, I admit that I need income. I admit that getting income will have its tedious aspects, no matter how I do it. But what do I want from the experience of getting income?

Wait! Belay that. Rather: what do I want – period – besides income? Be succinct, Mush!

Very well, okay. In that case, I want two things from work in addition to income: I want free time (to make music, to see Amma) and travel (to experience new things and to see my family and my friends (whom I now cleverly keep scattered all over the damn nation)).

So I think I might decide to become a stewardess. Er, flight attendant. Whatever. While the work is probably brutally boring and loud and repetitive, so is most work, and they set a damn high customer service bar for people essentially dealing with cattle all day. AND when you’re done? You’re in another town, with your hotel room paid for. And they’re only in the air 75 hours a month. Schedule for newbies is usually 3 days on, three days off. And free tickets on the airline, with super steep discounts on other airlines, including International travel.

My tattoos are all hidden under regular clothing, and I already know how to apply makeup and wear a suit and be friendly and articulate at interviews. I’m old and probably appear to be pretty stable, and if not I always have the divorce card (as in, I never meant to be starting a new career at 40 but I’m divorced, you know. It’s amazing but that shit gets sympathy, even in this modern age). I’d need to find out if I can keep the nose pin, and figure out how to support myself for five weeks in Seattle or LA or Chicago or whatever for training, but beyond that it can’t be that hard to become a flight attendant especially since it’s a pretty high-turnover industry, from what I’ve read. I might not survive it long if it’s as boring as it appears to be, but it could be a fun couple of years of hopping around the country and seeing people and doing fun things. Who knows, maybe it’ll really suit me and my short attention span and desire to go do new stuff all the time.

So there you have it: the plan. Live here for two years and pay off my damned debt, and somewhere along the way become a stewardess (er, flight attendant) and serve soda to people at thirty thousand feet so I can work fewer than full-time hours and still be able to travel.