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My five-year plan is currently on year eight.
Look, it's not my fault that it takes me time to do things. Okay, so maybe "time" is a misnomer.
Maybe I did spend two hours ordering a pizza when it could have taken me 15 minutes.
But I had to check that all my custom toppings were on the correct halves of the pizza. Vegetables on the left, meat on the right.
Forget the fact that you can always rotate a pizza to make the left half into the right half and vice versa.
All I'm saying is I'm trying to reach some goals, and it's taking me longer than expected. Sue me.
Actually, don't, because then it'd take me even longer to finish my five-year plan, and that doesn't even include this column.
My five-year / eight-year / bazillion-year plan reads a little like this.
1) Become the fittest human being possible, like the Terminator.
Fine. Perhaps the Terminator is not a human being, per se. But he can leap tall buildings in a single bound, unless that's Superman I'm thinking of.
I can leap into buildings. I can't clear them yet. Unless they're very small, like the model for the Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good.
I'm thinking I should settle for being out of shape.
2) Talk more with my friends.
I can count all my friends on one hand. If I don't want to count them on one finger, then I need to do more to preserve my friendships.
Seized with inspiration, I dialed my friend an hour ago and ended up waking her out of a sound sleep.
I ended up listening to 36 minutes of vented frustration before she finally hung up.
I guess I can subtract one from my total number of friends now.
On the positive side, that means fewer people to call on anniversaries and holidays.
3) Become an excellent engineer.
Right now, I'd judge my software engineering skills to be squarely between "beginner" and "coding god."
All right, so maybe it's a lot closer to "beginner." Maybe it is "beginner." Maybe it's below "beginner."
All I can say is it's a wonder I've been employed as a software engineer for over a year. Hey, it surprises me, too.
But that doesn't mean I can't learn. I'm a big fan of learning, especially of useless facts.
I can tell you that Æthelred the Unready was King of England from the years 978 to 1016, but I can't verbalize how to build an e-commerce website.
Look, if I knew how to do that, I wouldn't be writing a humor column. I'd be basking in sunlight and rolling in cash.
But I don't know how to build an e-commerce website, so I'll rededicate myself to programming.
When I make my millions, I won't bother with five-year plans. I'll just have a one-day plan, every day: watch movies and eat pizza, and both at the same time.
That's the dream. If I manage to hit it in five years, I'll say it was my five-year plan all along.
Just at the rate I'm going, five years will last a lifetime.
Alexandra Paskhaver is a software engineer and writer. Both jobs require knowing where to stick semicolons, but she's never quite; figured; it; out.
Previously:
• Be like Homer Simpson
• 08/20/25: Acting out
• 06/23/25: All talked out
• 02/05/24: Dropping the ball
• 02/05/24: Eye eye, doctor
• 12/30/24: Bad music, cheap concerts, and all that jazz
• 12/04/24: No dollars and no sense
• 09/17/24: Gone crackers
• 09/12/24: A matter of manners
• 08/21/24: Keeping things simple --- is hard
• 08/13/24: DIY = 'Destroy It Yourself'
• 06/26/24: All in a day's work
• 05/23/24: The state of the art
• 05/16/24: Rounding one's corners
• 03/22/24: Gone loopy
• 03/05/24: Philosophy rocks