Where do you see yourself in ten years?

Where do you see yourself in ten years?

It's one of those patently ridiculous questions one will be asked occasionally, especially by potential employers. Maybe to some it isn't an unanswerable question. I can't say that I've had the foresight to predict or even know specifically where I want to be in life so far down the line.

No, I'm not interviewing for another job, if that's what you're thinking. And no, this blog post wasn't triggered by anything specifically. I think the impulse to get all existential has been percolating for awhile and has reached the point where it needs to be written about.

Now stick with what's going to sound like a major gear shift but will tie in with the above eventually...

Working at a college can be a bit like living in Groundhog Day. Student issues repeat quarter after quarter, year after year. Sure, the students and times change, but the experience of dealing with young adults who are taking big steps forward in their lives and pursuing higher education (or at least that's the idea) stays consistent.

From my office's vantage point I am unfortunately privy to some of the stuff that, frankly, isn't my business, nor do I wish to hear it. I'm talking about the whinier conversations and chest-thumping that is a distraction when I'm trying to work. Worse, I hear this chatter and wonder, "Did I sound like them when I was that age?"

Naturally, this has spurred me to reflect on myself about twenty years ago. I was still in high school then, but college wouldn't be too far off. While I don't believe I ever gave voice to the arrogance--and, let it be known, unearned bragging--that I now hear filling the open area, I may have been capable of bemoaning things with the same ease and frequency. (I was and am too well practiced at self-loathing to have been so cocky, though.) It's enough to make me retroactively embarrassed about the me of twenty years ago.

Who was that guy? Certainly there are many qualities we share, but I also shudder to think what I may have been like. (Keep in mind that I was not problematic or rebellious, so it isn't as though I was on a rampage then.)

OK, ten years ago....who was I then? Today I'm more like 2000 Man than the twenty years younger version, which is as it should be, but in some ways I know that he had different expectations for life in 2010 than how things are. It's not exactly disappointment--OK, some of it is--but more like befuddlement at how in the world I ended up with the good, the bad, and the indifferent.

Even if one is an old soul as a youth, self-awareness still comes with age and experience. That I can clearly see as I watch eighteen to twenty-two year-olds as they struggle to figure themselves out. Nevertheless, time and accrued wisdom don't help me see myself any clearer in ten years. I have some specific, but mostly vague, notions of what I'd like for that guy to be. So future me, how do I get there?