Year of the Dragon, or Things to Do Before I'm 36

image from here

According to the Chinese Zodiac, life is divided into 12 year cycles. Having reached the ripe old age of 24 it's once again the Year of the Dragon, and I'm feeling like big prophetic changes are on the horizon. I don't remember exactly what the year I turned 12 looked like, but Y2K was the Millenium, the year before I was back in public school, and grade 6 is when I knew I wanted to be a librarian. It was a time of change, transition, anticipation, and a good dose of fear (since I am rather resistant to change sometimes).

Since the dragon is awake again, my brain has been overly active; planning, plotting, scheming, and overthinking absolutely everything. Forget sleep, I have a future to organize! To make my mind shut up so that I can sleep I make lists of things to do. Lots and lots of lists of lots and lots of things to do. Most of them don't really qualify as important (go to the dentist, file student loan papers, take books back to the library on time), but there are some big things that need to happen before the next dragon year comes up. 

I want a proper job; a 9 to 5 job, an intellectually stimulating job, a job where the management team aren't jerks, a job where we have cake once a month just because we're that awesome. I want a gorgeous condo; a condo on a tree-lined street, a condo that's only a few blocks from downtown, a condo that allows puppies, a condo with a really really large closet. I want all my books moved out of my parent's house, into my gorgeous condo and onto custom bookshelves, with all the holes in the collection filled. I want to take a trip across the ocean to somewhere classic; London, Paris, Venice, Mallorca/Ibiza. And I want to have an RRSP plan, so that my parents will stop complaining when I tell them about the ridiculous amounts of money I'm paying for the gorgeous condo, and the book-shipping, and the overseas trip.