My Future (As I Saw it at Age 10 and Now)

I was feeling nostalgic tonight and happened upon a notebook from the Limited 2 with only one entry in it, titled "My Future" and dated 10/10/01 which I think makes me ten years old.

I have copied the entry exactly, misspellings and all. Here it is:

I will graduat from Durby or Sacred Heart with top grades then go to Tuffs collage to become a vet. When I am their I will bring Angie and one horse. I will be a great rider and compet in shows. I will stay in Boston and get my masters degree. After that I will somehow meet Andrew Purcellie and he will be tall. After 10 months of dateing he will propuse as we walk along a beach. Our wedding will be in a church. We will move to a white New England farm house with a barn, pool, pound and 15 acres of green land. Kayliegh Macrea will live 10 miles away from us and she will not flirt with Andrew. Me and her will often shop together. Amy Almedai and me will open a vetanry hospital and do great. Andrew will be a Lawer and always come home for dinner. We will have a daughter named Emma. During the day the maid will stay with her. Every Sunday and Thanksgiving my parents will come for dinner. In our barn there will be ten horses of our own and one for my daughter. We will have show rings, turn outs and trail rides. Andrew and my barn will always be clean. Our house will be filled with things from Anthroplogy, Pottery Barn and Martha Stewart crafts. There will be lots of flowers.

When Emma is 7 years old we will have twins, Mike and Rose. All of the children will have horses and goats. If this could happen life would be great.


So, wow. I was a horse-crazy, tradition loving Masshole as a kid. Also, I was a neglectful mother who gave her kids boring names and only one horse whilst I hoarded her nine. And I just wanted my husband tall, as clean as my barn and not-flirted-with, dammit!

I thought it would be fun to write a vision of my future now at 19:
I will finish up my BFA and move to New York City. I would like to work for a cultural/ music/ fashion photography/ feminist magazine, or in a publishing house or literary magazine. I would love to travel, maybe see Japan or take a vaction. If I feel like I need to, I would like to go grad school at Columbia, or move to Iowa (eek) for the famed Iowa Writer’s Workshop and finish my first novel.

I would like to have fun, go dancing, learn ballet, make friends, fall in love, run in parks, cook fabulous meals in my apartment. I’d love for my book(s) to do well. But if they do not I would think about opening a café. I would want to get married between 24 and 29, ideally. And never, ever in a church, but rather a meadow, with good music and cupcakes. We would never leave the city, we would feel like drowning outside of it. In someways I am still my domestic 10 year-old self: I want to decorate our brownstone and have 2 or 4 kids. This is embarrassing, but I like the names Greer, Matilda or Calla and Isaac and Finn. We might move to a little, liberal town near the sea one day, but only if we really want to. My kids can do what they want, I would actually like for them to avoid horseback riding. I think I would be a cool sort of earth mamma.

Whether all of this, or none of this happens, I just want to be happy, and I want my friends and family to be happy. I think I've done a good job on that so far!