On Creating Futures

Or, "I am building a life that future!me is going to love (and I might've had my weirdest//most brilliant idea ever)".

I like preparing for things. Blame it on whatever undiagnosed variant of social anxiety disorder I have, if you want, or on the fact that as much as I hate damage control, that's a role I seem to spend most of my life playing. Whatever the cause, my life is equal parts preparation and praying I have enough fridge brilliance to get through the stuff I can't brace for. I plan when I'm leaving the house as early as possible (if I know exactly when I'm going to interact with unfamiliar people a week in advance, great), and usually the only "unplanned" outings I do are runs to the post office when I sell something online. I buy the dresses I wear for weddings before I know if I'll even be invited to some of them. And then... well, then there's the stuff I'm doing for future!me.

It started innocently enough. Around a year and a half ago, I wandered across the fabulous horror that is the Beekeeper's Quilt (if you're not inclined to click the link, it's a knitting pattern). Since I make socks for all my engaged and pregnant acquaintances, and since I'm 21 and grew up in homeschooler-land and therefore know a lot of people in one of those two categories at any given time, I generate quite a bit of leftover sock yarn. Making two hexipuffs out of each remnant before I send it off to someone in the Ravelry RAK group I try to participate in just makes sense. But then I got another one of my fabulous ideas. The beekeeper quilt, assuming I ever finish the darn thing (I need to make approximately 400 puffs and at this point I've done maybe 60?), would be a perfect wedding present for my future Person. So... there's now a time component. Not a hugely pertinent one, seeing as I am currently sans anyone I have any romantic interest in and I'd like to spend a decent amount of time getting to know someone before walking down the aisle and (possibly) changing my surname, but an existent one. It's motivation!! I suck at motivation!! What's not to love, right?

Well, then the future planning got weirder a few months ago when I impulse-bought a wedding dress.

Okay, maybe "impulse-bought" is the wrong word. There's this thrift store twenty minutes from my house that I go to on a regular basis - all the proceeds support local women's shelters, the ladies who work there adore me, and you never know what you're gonna find there. Around the beginning of summer, I saw The Dress. Some of the people I know who've gotten married recently say you just know when you find the perfect dress. (The rest have gotten married in their mothers' gowns - heavily altered, of course - which has never been an option for me because my mom is five inches shorter than me and was a size 4 when she got married. I haven't been a size 4 since I was about fourteen, and between the twin gifts of hipbones and C-cup boobs, I will never be that small again.) Obviously, of course, all of those people were looking for a wedding dress. I... wasn't. But there it was anyways, beaded bodice and high neckline and empire waistline and flowing skirt, taunting me. I could tell, just from eyeballing it (the thrift store had the sense to put the nice wedding dresses several feet off the ground), that it just had to be a size 10 (my usual, assuming the piece in question hasn't shrunk into oblivion, which formal gowns generally don't). I fell in love.

For weeks, I shamelessly eyed the thing, until one day I finally had the nerve to ask how much it was. My brain was all "it has to be around $60, yeah?". Wrong. Dress was actually $90, which meant that after tax (thank you Indiana for 7% sales tax when the two other states within sane driving distance are 6%), it was almost a hundred even. I did not care. I needed this dress. I tried it on in the shop, explaining beforehand to the nice old lady that I wasn't even seeing anyone and was more interested in having it as something to keep on hand for when my time comes. She understood pretty well, didn't even give me the "how is a nice girl like you single?" routine like a lot of people would've. It fit perfectly. I had to buy it. Y'know, just in case.

The dress lingered untouched in the closet of our spare bedroom for a few more weeks, until my mother accidentally found it. This was one of the hazards of putting it in that closet, but it had more space to hang properly there, and hell, there isn't space in my closet for something of that scale. I knew she'd find it eventually, and I wasn't quite sure how to explain the situation. Thankfully, I didn't have to. She gave me a small routine about her friend who's altered everyone's wedding dresses this past year (lesson of that afternoon - someone better submit that woman for sainthood because she's eighty-something and way too nice to have gone through some of that stuff), and then she decided to get it dry-cleaned and put in a proper bag for me. For my mother, who used to worry more than made any logical sense about my seeming lack of interest in guys (this thankfully stopped once my sister's type was defined as "breathing"), this was a huge step. And that was it. One huge expense out of the way for my future wedding. And again, I thought that was it as far as longterm planning. And again, it wasn't.

The reason I'm doing this post is because today I found another thing that I am meant to do, another thing that solves some of my problems. I'm going to build a house. More specifically, an Earthship. I advise caution on that website - whomever wrote most of the material is definitely on something - but the concept crossed my Tumblr dash this afternoon and I poked around and... well, before I could poke around too much, I had to wander off to work. Just as well. While at work, trying to figure out how an elephant had managed to demolish half of the pharmacy section (and not the part that usually looks bad either), I had one of my feelings.

For reference, I have had feelings exactly twice before in my life. The first one happened when I was 13, in church of all places. Nowadays when my brain wanders while I'm at the church I'm trying to get out of, it either focuses on questionably appropriate fic ideas or trying to figure out why one of the other women around my age thought a particular outfit or hairdo was a good idea (former-homeschooled ladytypes are fashion disasters by nature, and I say this as someone who is definitely in that category). Well, needless to say, 13-year-old me was a lot more innocent. I don't know what I was thinking about on that spring morning, but all of a sudden I had a very strong feeling that I was supposed to be a writer. Not that I'd really considered other career options before that, but it was definitely an experience of the Divine. (Incidentally, this was before things got crazy at that church, but... that's another post. Or, probably, a series of them, to be written once I get out For Real This Time I Fricking Mean It.)

The second one, I can't remember exactly when it happened thanks to the fact that I have the short-term memory of a fricking gerbil, but I'm pretty sure it was about a year ago (or maybe closer to two - point being, it remains a fairly recent development). I was doing self-eval, as I tend to do when I'm bored and/or fighting back the urge to tell someone I dislike exactly where they can stick it, and the subjects of my depression and my untouched-ness crossed my mind (as per usual - self-eval is either on those subjects or on fandom stuff, and I'm pretty sure I was very between primary fandoms when this happened). And out of the blue, for the first time, I knew there was a light at the end of my battle. And more importantly, I knew something about my future Person. I will find them once the worst of my darkness has past. I don't know anything more than that, of course - I'm pretty sure I have crossed that part of my life, but maybe it's supposed to be once I've learned to control the bad days? - but I know that. When the worst is over, when I am as whole as I will ever be as my own entity, I will find them. (Or, more likely, they will find me... but again, that's another post.)

Anyways... feelings. I had my third real one today, and it's about this possible house project. I want to create something for the family I eventually want to have, and this particular model/method is perfect. It's sustainable (something I'm generally fascinated by), it's cost-effective to build (at least after the plans and land to build it on are acquired), and it seems idiot-proof (always a good plus when it comes to DIY things). And I know in my core that this is something I'm supposed to do. There's just the small problem of... well, money. I want to do this on my own (obviously) and in cash (because srsly, trying to get a loan would be against the spirit of the beast and borderline-impossible for someone whose "proper" employment is averaging 20 hours a week at 15¢ above minimum wage aaaaand doesn't have a credit history). I have no idea how that's gonna happen, but it will. I'm determined. I've done enough poking around to be sure of the plausibilities. If I can figure out the financial side, this is happening. It's just weird enough to work, and that's how all of my best ideas start out.

And hey, if I get lucky and find my Person before I'm done with these things I want to have ready for them... they can help. They're in for a lifetime of chasing after my fridge-brilliance WTFery; they might as well start as soon as they can, right?

Song of the day - "Jackie and Wilson", Hozier.