Ten Years

“My life has got to be like this, it’s got to keep going up” — Jay Gatsby

Prompt: Describe how you would like your life to be in ten years time.

In ten years, I want to be rich, retired, and married to Rihanna. Maybe. It’s hard to predict what will happen, much less, what you will like in ten years. This year, I turned 30 and I’m surprised at how different my life is from what I predicted at 20.

At 20, I was a junior in college. I had finally settled on economics as a major with the intent becoming a corporate lawyer. I wasn’t really sure what a corporate lawyer did, but I knew it involved debate and earning a lot of money — both of which I liked. Instead of becoming a lawyer, I took more math classes, almost applied for a PhD in economics, and finally became a healthcare litigation consultant at 22. Based on my prediction at 20, I was at least still in the same room as the corporate lawyers I hoped to become.

At 25, I decided leave my job and build the next Kaiser Permanente with a friend from college. We failed on that specific mission. But I made a life long friend out of the experience, and learned a lot of valuable life and business lessons too. Although I ate into my savings for that company, it’s the best money I’ve ever spent.

After the startup went bust, I decided the best solution to my fiscal crisis was to take on massive debt and go to business school. B-school was great. It was an opportunity for a poor kid from Atlanta to pretend to be a rich kid for two years. I traveled to 7 countries. Took the best class I have ever taken — Pete Fader’s marketing probability class. And, managed to squeeze in a computer science degree along the way.

20 year old me wouldn’t have predicted that I would be working in software at one of the largest companies in the world. 20 year old me would have be frightened by the bureaucracy and the size. 15 year old me didn’t even want to go to college. 30 year old me has four degrees from two schools. 10 year old me hated math. 30 year old me works with data scientists and research scientists to develop algorithms to delight customers.

I don’t really know where the next ten years will lead me, but I hope it keeps going up.

Prompt source: https://writingexercises.co.uk/subjectgenerator.php