My plans were different 5 years ago than 10 years ago. 10 years ago I was still in college, and I was not dating anyone. My plan for my career was to be a novelist, but I was beginning to suspect that I might actually need a real job too, so my backup plan was to be anything I could be with an English major that would pay the bills and wouldn't cause me to hate myself. My plan for my personal life was to marry someone of either gender and, if the person turned out to be male, probably have kids (although I feared even then that I would never actually find anyone to marry at all).
5 years ago I had a dead-end editorial job where everyone hated me, and I was not dating anyone. My hope career-wise was to obtain a better-paying job, but that didn't seem very likely to happen at all, since I didn't have enough faith in my ability to obtain one to even summon the energy to apply for any. My hope for my personal life was still the same as 10 years ago, except that I was feeling less hopeful than ever about it, and beginning to resign myself to permanent singlehood instead.
Career-wise, I'm currently much better off than I had any sane reason to hope for 5 years ago. So I'm very happy in that respect. I still want to be a novelist, but I also feel very satisfied for the moment with the career I do have. Relationship-wise, well, I've managed to have some actual good sex for a change, and one relationship that didn't totally die off quite as quickly as the previous ones had. But since both the people I had the good sex with are gone from my life now (and good riddance to them both, because they weren't good enough at some important things other than sex), I currently don't feel that my personal life has improved any - even though it sort of has in the sense that I've had better past experiences now. I just feel an ever-increasing certainty that I will remain single forever. And possibly a very, very slight increased acceptance of that as being not such a bad fate after all - but the increase on that front is very slight for the moment, and needs to increase a lot more before it will make much difference to me.
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5 years ago I had a dead-end editorial job where everyone hated me, and I was not dating anyone. My hope career-wise was to obtain a better-paying job, but that didn't seem very likely to happen at all, since I didn't have enough faith in my ability to obtain one to even summon the energy to apply for any. My hope for my personal life was still the same as 10 years ago, except that I was feeling less hopeful than ever about it, and beginning to resign myself to permanent singlehood instead.
Career-wise, I'm currently much better off than I had any sane reason to hope for 5 years ago. So I'm very happy in that respect. I still want to be a novelist, but I also feel very satisfied for the moment with the career I do have. Relationship-wise, well, I've managed to have some actual good sex for a change, and one relationship that didn't totally die off quite as quickly as the previous ones had. But since both the people I had the good sex with are gone from my life now (and good riddance to them both, because they weren't good enough at some important things other than sex), I currently don't feel that my personal life has improved any - even though it sort of has in the sense that I've had better past experiences now. I just feel an ever-increasing certainty that I will remain single forever. And possibly a very, very slight increased acceptance of that as being not such a bad fate after all - but the increase on that front is very slight for the moment, and needs to increase a lot more before it will make much difference to me.