10 Year Plan
Last Friday my firm celebrated the 10 year anniversary of two people. These two people came to Copenhagen from Russia to find a better life for themselves. From what I have heard and experienced working with them, they are both greatly responsible for the DNA of my firm’s aesthetics and style. I’m working on a project with one of them and I can concur that there is an intangible ability to see things that has been honed through years of struggle and experience. Both of them said that they never thought that they would be in Copenhagen for as long as they have. They were both in a relationship when they started with our firm and while they’re not in one anymore, I can see how much they still care deeply for each other. 10 years is enough time that would test a relationship and show you what is truly important and worth fighting for. I have never done anything for 10 years straight, even school has been interrupted with the punctuation of life for all the years I’ve gone through it.
Growing up, there was an obsession with the future, “What is your 5 year plan? 10 year plan?” I’m turning 30 this year and I was asked to plan a third of my life or more than half my life when I was asked those questions. I still don’t know what I’m doing with my life to be honest but I know that if you asked me 10 years ago if this is what I was planning on doing, sitting on the Metro in Copenhagen going home after work where I’m about to make a delicious fried chicken sandwich because I miss the ones back in the US so much, no. I wouldn’t have believed you at all.
Even though I was asked to see so far into my future, I was also told that I shouldn’t dream from my parents. I know it was their way of shielding me from having my heart broken in the way theirs were when they had to become parents so young. If I ever told my parents that I dreamt of moving abroad, I would get told that my ambitions outweighed my reality and I shouldn’t make that a goal. I can imagine that desire seemed like I took their sacrifice and did not acknowledge any of it. Here was a new home that they had to make for themselves and here I was rejecting it.
When I look at the next 10 years, I look back at the last 10. The 20 year old Andy that tried to make something of his life in an unknown city and failed, an Andy that took a chance, failed, wandered around for 10 years to get to this point. All that wandering though led me to the greatest relationships I’ve built through my sister and friends, it led me to being a part of something greater than myself in a city I tried to run away from, it led me to find my own voice and enter a new career that is a struggle but one I keep coming back to, it led me to my first love and first heartbreak, and it led me here, about to miss my stop. As I look to the next 10 years, I know that life will only speed up and not slowdown and I know now to not fight it and to savor every moment like I am now, hearing that DSB chime announcing my stop.