I have two elusive goals.
The first, to travel the world. Perhaps this goal will be realistic way into my future, when my husband and I retire. My aunt and uncle are both retired and they travel the world, so in a way it could be realistic. However, for the next 40 years, it is totally unrealistic. The reasons for this: money, family, children, work. Unless I win lotto or find some filthy rich person to pay for my vacations, I will not have the financial means to travel the world for a very, very long time. I want to have a large family with 4 or 5 children, and soon. It is not possible to constantly leave children behind and go on extravagent vacations, but I would not want to take them either…so the vacations would have to wait until they are old enough to all stay on their own. Again, this will not be for at least 35 years from now. Lastly, I have to work, as will the person I go away with. As a teacher, I could travel in the summers because I have off…but not all people are teachers and have the conveniency to take off from work all summer, they must work. I hope to achieve this goal one day, but for now I will just keep dreaming and planning for the day it happens.
The second elusive goal I have is to spend my life volunteering, not working. I absolutely love teaching, but if I did not have to work and I could spend my life volunteering for different causes, I would be so happy. I think volunteering is so gratifying and I have volunteered for numerous clubs, oragnizations, and events all throughout high school and college. Now that I am working two jobs and in graduate school, volunteering really is not possible. It will be even more impossible once I am married and have a family of my own. Volunteering has always been a strong passion of mine so it is quite upsetting to me that I have no been able to really volunteer for anything in over a year, espeically considering how much I used to volunteer. Spending my life helping others and doing all different things would be amazing, but financially it just will never work.
I have always hoped to one day have 4 children too :). Although I plan to drag them along with me during my summertime travels of the world, despite whether or not they are interested in the places I want to go :). It’s so nice that you enjoy volunteering. I enjoy it as well. I totally get that it is hard to squeeze it in with everything else going on, though.