将来该做啥？ El futuro no está en mis manos.

I'm at the point in me life where everyone seems to expect me to have my life all figured out. If I had a dollar for every time some has asked me about my post-graduation plans then maybe I'd have enough money so that I wouldn't have to graduate, haha (well, I probably wouldn't have that much money. Maybe if I had a thousand dollars for every time someone asked me about it...).

I wouldn't mind the friendly interrogations so much if I had a better response, but I usually just end up mumbling something along the lines of, "oh... I have no idea; maybe this, maybe that... blah blah blah..." That answer is only partially accurate though because while I don't actually have any sort of plans nailed down yet, this answer makes it sound like I haven't even started thinking about it, but I have. In fact, I think about it a lot and I have a lot of ideas floating around in my head. So here are all of the current potential post-graduation candidates (in no particular order):

• I could stay in Boulder and bum around for awhile, find a place to move so I don't have to stay in Grandma's basement, and probably keep the job that I have now at Infoture. I like Boulder and I wouldn't mind staying here, but I probably won't end up staying here because I have other options that won't require paying rent.
  
• I could try to find a "real job" somewhere, maybe move somewhere, anywhere... but I don't know how much of a rush I really want to be in to get one of those "real jobs." One potentially "real job" I'm thinking about though is to try to get a job with Google in China (Beijing, specifically). But I'm thinking that even if I decide to try to get a grown-up job, I probably won't even start applying for anything until next summer at the earliest, and maybe not even until the fall.
• Currently the most likely plan is to move back to Mom's house and get a winter job up there. I might also be able to keep my current job at Infoture (since I work remotely anyway), but I think I want to get a different job that I enjoy a little more even if it pays less and won't help my resume even a little bit. This includes jobs like being a ski instructor, or possibly a shuttle driver either around Beaver Creek or maybe between the Vail area and Denver, or something along those lines. I think it sounds like fun.
• There's a remote possibility that I will move into my Dad's house if he ends up getting a job that he applied for in Austraila.
• I suppose I could try to find a scholarship or something to go somewhere to study Chinese (or any other language for that matter)... but that doesn't sound very likely.
• If I am able to sock away enough money over the next few months, I might just take some time off to do nothing at all, maybe travel a bit. But I doubt I will really be able to save that much money, and I would just be bored after a few days with nothing to do.

Some things that I'm trying to keep in mind as I contemplate my near future:

• I'd like to try to take the GRE's in the spring.
• Dad and Raissa and I might try to plan a fairly long trip (like a month or two) to Europe around April or May, so I need to save up some money and keep that time slot open.
• I should probably start looking for a good way to either start learning a new language to stay on track with my ten-languages-by-fifty goal, or to improve my Chinese before it gets too rusty. Maybe I'll look for a job in Brazil; or maybe Chile; or maybe some other interesting place.
  
• I've got MINI Mania on the brain making me want to get a job, earn about $30k, and buy one of those dang minis. Other things I want to purchase include... well actually, now that I think about it, I don't really feel the need to purchase that much stuff besides the mini. Maybe some clothes. And some bicycles. And more cars. And probably a comfortable bed.
  
• Whatever I do, I want it to be something that I'll look back on with fondness in 5, 10, or 30 years.
• Is there anyway I could work a girlfriend into my life somehow? I sure would like a girlfriend...
• I don't want to get trapped in a boring rut. Avoid ruts...
• Maybe get an MBA? Or perhaps go to grad school for something else, like linguistics? Grad school of any kind is probably at least another year or two or three away for me though.

So that's about where I'm at. Still, that hasn't got me any closer to an intelligent answer to the, "so, whatchya doin' after graduation" question. Maybe I should just apply the Napoleon Dynamite line and answer with, "Whatever I feel like! Gosh!" Haha, yeah, that would be sweet. Really though, I am a lot more interested right now with just making it through this brutal last semester that I've signed myself up for, and I'll start thinking about my post graduation plans just as soon as I graduate.

Maybe I should just turn into this guy in this video. The song is "Desaparecido" by Manu Chao. The song has some fun lyrics about how people call him "the disappeared" and "when they look for me I'm not there and when they find me I'm not the one in front of them because I already ran off the other way." Hmm, that would be an interesting sentence for some semantic logic analysis...