Perhaps.

I wrote this piece a year ago. It’s not surprising to say that life has turned out very differently for me.

Perhaps

I don’t sleep much at night.  So why should tonight be any different?  Yet here I am expecting—no, wishing that it would be different and I could actually fall asleep.  It’s always been this way, or at least for as long as I can remember.  I’m not usually troubled by things that happened during the day and I don’t reflect much on things that happened in the past.  So what keeps me up at night?  Thoughts about the future.  Aspirations for life.  Expectations.

In a conversation about recent dreams I’ve been having, my significant other suggested I try writing my thoughts out before bed.  “Perhaps it will help you clear your mind and fall asleep” they said.  “Write about your plans for the next day.  The next week.  Month.  Year.  Whatever it may be.  Just get it out of your head and onto paper.”

So here I am.  Getting it out of my head and onto paper.

 

I expect tomorrow that my alarm will go off at 6am.  I expect that I will not immediately jump out of bed.  Rather, I will press the snooze button on my phone several times before finally looking at the time and realizing I will be late if I don’t wake up now.  I expect that I will not care if I’m late and decide to sleep another five minutes.  I will regret this decision.

I expect I will speed the entire drive and perhaps my blood pressure will rise when I see a cop and am forced to tap my brakes.  I will not get a speeding ticket.

I expect to arrive right on time to class.  I will sit down at my poorly chosen seat from the beginning of the semester that I cannot change now because they are all “assigned”.  Or at least that’s how I see it.  I won’t make eye contact with anyone in the room, not just yet.  Not until I have stopped breathing so heavily from the run from my car to the classroom.

I will repeat these last few things for the rest of the day until it is time to go home.  Hell, I will repeat these things for the next year at least until I graduate.

I expect that in a year I will graduate with some kind of bullshit degree I probably won’t even use.  I won’t use it because I don’t expect to actually figure out what I want to do as a career within the next year.  I mean, here I am: a junior in college and have switched schools three times in the last two years and changed my major at least five different times.  I don’t expect my indecisiveness to change anytime soon.

I expect that I will take the summer off after graduation.  Partly because I want to travel. Partly because I haven’t found a job.  I will end up in Colorado, perhaps working as a server in some low-key restaurant.  Or perhaps as a bartender.  I’ve always wanted to be a bartender.

I expect that this lifestyle will disappointment my family.  “All that money wasted!”  “Why not get a job in your degree field?”  “You won’t be happy if you live like this much longer” I can hear them saying.  I will assure them that it is only for the summer.

I do not expect this lifestyle to end after summer.

I expect that I will finally enjoy my life living alongside my significant other.  I expect to finally settle down after some time.  I expect that I will do some freelance writing as it has always been a hobby of mine.

I do not expect anyone to understand the way I lived my life.  But I do expect that I will not care.

I expect that I will finally figure out what I’ve always wanted to do: be happy.  And I expect that I will be for the rest of my life.

That is what I expect for the future.

For tonight, however, I expect to still struggle to fall asleep.  I expect that I will assure my significant other in the morning that this has helped me although it hasn’t.  I expect them to see right through my lies because they always do.  I will tell them how much I really do appreciate their advice because at least that part of this whole thing is actually true.

I will tell them how thankful I am for their understanding.

Nevertheless, I do not expect that I will continue writing before bed like this.  I will eventually grow bored and tiresome of the redundancy of it all like I usually do.

In the meantime, however, I will continue writing down thoughts I have that no one really cares about.  I will compile these into a book, perhaps a journal or simply a collection of sayings.

Perhaps I will publish it.

Perhaps that is my whole purpose in writing this.  Perhaps this is the first few pages of a bestselling novel.

Perhaps.