Waiting, Waiting, and More Waiting

It seems like my life thus far has been noth­ing but waiting.

Wait­ing for…

…my 5^th birth­day so I could join my sis­ter in the big kid’s room at preschool.
…age 10 so I could get an adult library card and check out more than YA books.
…ele­men­tary school to end so I could go to the mid­dle school.
…my 13^th birth­day and offi­cial­ly be a teenager.
…mid­dle school to end so I could be a big high schooler.
…my 16^th birth­day so I could start driving.
…the last Har­ry Pot­ter book to come out.
…my 18^th birth­day so I could buy lot­tery tick­ets, cig­a­rettes, and oth­er age restrict­ed stuff from Wal-Mart.
…my col­lege accep­tance let­ter to come in the mail.
…high school to be over so I could get away from my classmates.
…basic to be over FOREVER so I did­n’t have to keep doing stu­pid stuff for no reason.
…tech school to be over so I could get back to college.
…my 21^st birth­day so I could buy alco­hol for myself.
…my sec­ond course of Java to be over so I did­n’t have to keep tor­tur­ing myself.
…cal­cu­lus to be over, because, ew calculus.
…my intern­ship to be over so I could go back to the easy life of college.
…wait­ing for my first rota­tion to be over so I could move to a new town.
…my Aus­tralian vaca­tion with my sis­ter to start!
…my 25^th birth­day so my car insur­ance would get cheaper.
…the Chau­tauqua to start.
…the end of the work day/week.
…all my fun trips to get here.

I’m not sure what it says about me, my per­son­al­i­ty, or my life that I’m always look­ing to the future. I think part of it is I real­ize things will be bet­ter in the future than they are right now and so I long for those events to get here so I can enjoy life more? Each one of those events has made my life ‘bet­ter’ or changed me sig­nif­i­cant­ly, but I also have the gift of hind­sight and my over­all life does­n’t real­ly change too dras­ti­cal­ly after I reach the thing I’ve been wait­ing for.

I think anoth­er part of it is I’m a plan­ner. I love to know what’s going to hap­pen in my life and sched­ule rough plans weeks and months ahead of time. If I know they’re com­ing, I have some­thing to look for­ward to when I’m super bored at work or bummed when yet anoth­er rela­tion­ship did­n’t work out.

One would think I would have learned to sit back and smell the ros­es of my life as it stands, but that’s not the case. I sup­pose some­day, when all I have to look for­ward is turn­ing 30 or 50, I might be a bit more involved in the present, but until then, here are the things (some patient­ly, oth­ers not so patient­ly) I’m cur­rent­ly look­ing for­ward to:

The End of My Rotational Program

My employ­er offers some­thing called the Ear­ly Devel­op­ment pro­gram. Fresh col­lege grad­u­ates come in the com­pa­ny and do 2, 18-month rota­tions with­in var­i­ous aspects of the com­pa­ny. I’m cur­rent­ly in the sec­ond rota­tion and rapid­ly com­ing up on what’s known as ‘phas­ing out’. In Octo­ber, I will be allowed to inter­view for a new per­ma­nent posi­tion. No more being forced to move around every 18 months, no more being a glo­ri­fied intern doing the dirty work of every one else. I’m thrilled, as the pro­gram has­n’t exact­ly been fun for me. I have learned a lot about the com­pa­ny and how the dif­fer­ent divi­sions inter­act with each oth­er, but I can’t say I’d rec­om­mend the pro­gram con­tin­ue as is.

For both rota­tions, I was placed in high­ly tech­ni­cal roles that weren’t a great fit for my skills and future desired posi­tions. Now that I have these two tech­ni­cal roles under my belt, I will be nudged towards sim­i­lar roles instead of posi­tions I’d like to do. The whole focus of this pro­gram is gain expe­ri­ence, which I’ve done. It’s just been the wrong type of expe­ri­ence.  I’m not exact­ly con­fi­dent I’ll be able to get a suit­able posi­tion, either, after watch­ing some of my friends phase out of the pro­gram. At the end of the day, the com­pa­ny has roles to fill and busi­ness needs to meet.

The Housing Market to Heat Up

In my area of the coun­try, we’re fac­ing a fierce hous­ing mar­ket. Hous­es come on the mar­ket and in less than 24 hours are gone. It’s not sur­pris­ing, real­ly, con­sid­er­ing my town rou­tine­ly pops up in lists titled some­thing like “Best City for the Mid­dle Class”, “Top 10 Hippest Mid-Sized Cities in Amer­i­ca”, “Best Cap­i­tal Cities”, “25 Best Cities for Young Entre­pre­neurs”, “Best Mid-Sized Cities for Mak­ing a Liv­ing”, “Best Cities for Young Fam­i­lies in 2016”, and “Best Cities to Live and Work”. Who knew these were actu­al cat­e­gories. So you have a lot of young peo­ple mov­ing into town, which means hous­ing inven­to­ry is at an all-time low. My real­tor told me this is the odd­est year he’s seen. Nor­mal­ly they like to have close to 500k units for sale, and they’re see­ing lev­els clos­er to 300k. It’s get­ting to the point where real­tors are going door-to-door in neigh­bor­hoods and ask­ing peo­ple if they’d con­sid­er mov­ing and sell­ing their house.

None of this applies to the mul­ti-fam­i­ly mar­ket. There’s only been one new prop­er­ty on the mar­ket in the last month (in the areas of town I’m look­ing in). That prop­er­ty went back off the mar­ket in less than 24 hours, although that was a bit of a spe­cial case as a pre­vi­ous offer came back on the table. I’m not quite at the point of send­ing out let­ters to exist­ing own­ers, but I’m get­ting close. Octo­ber is rapid­ly approaching!

If the time comes for me to apply for jobs and I’m forced to move else­where before I buy a prop­er­ty here, I’m not sure what I’ll do. I sup­pose it depends on where I move to. If I go back to the town I moved away from, I might try to help an exist­ing rental guru. If I move to a new place, I’ll start by find­ing a new real­tor and get­ting a feel for the new mar­ket before I invest in a prop­er­ty there. But hey, why wor­ry about some­thing that might not even happen?

Upcoming Fun Trips

I have a LOT of fun trips planned that I’m very excit­ed for. Yes, this has caused my spend­ing to be slight­ly much high­er, but all the fun times I’m going to have will more than make up for it. They include, but aren’t lim­it­ed to, the following:

-April 30^th: Berk­shire Hath­away Annu­al Investors’ Meet­ing, Oma­ha. I’m meet­ing up with Mr. 1500, the Income Surfers, and the PoPs, so it should be kickin good time.
-May 12^th: Nashville, TN. Not real­ly look­ing for­ward to this one since I got sub­poe­naed to appear in court. Long sto­ry short, I’m tes­ti­fy­ing against my for­mer best friend in her cus­tody hear­ing. Yep. It’s like a Life­time movie.
-May 21^st: Car­di­nals games in St. Louis with a col­lege friend of mine. A col­league was sell­ing her sea­son tick­ets for May, so I jumped at the chance to sit on the first base line for only $60! What a steal! And it’s a give­away day woot!
-May 27^th: Camp Mus­tache in Seat­tle. I’ll be hang­ing out with Mr. Mon­ey Mus­tache him­self, Bran­don from Mad Fien­tist, Paula from Afford Any­thing and 49 oth­er Mus­tachi­ans. Some of the oth­er atten­dees are peo­ple I met last fall in Ecuador, so I’m excit­ed to see them again. All around, it’s going to be a fab­u­lous time and I can­not wait!
-August 13^th: Cubs-Cards game in Chica­go with more Chau­tauqua friends. Base­ball + drinks+ good friends = mucho fun. I’ll also be attend­ing an FI get togeth­er that week­end, so if you’re any­where near the area let me know and I’ll hook you up with details!
-Sep­tem­ber 2^nd: Maine for Labor Day week­end to, you guessed it, hang out with more Chau­tauqua friends! I’m so very grate­ful I’ve met all these won­der­ful peeps to be able to trav­el around and see them 🙂
-Sep­tem­ber 21^st: FINCON. “Where Mon­ey and Media meet” and where I’m hop­ing to meet up with a lot of FI blog­gers and oth­er mon­ey-media peo­ple. Plus, it’s in San Diego so that means I’m going to the Zoo and eat­ing In-n-Out. It’ll be my first time in Cal­i­for­nia as well!
-Octo­ber 2^nd: A quick stop home to attend a friend’s wed­ding and then I’m fly­ing across the pond to go see the new Har­ry Pot­ter play in West End, Lon­don. I’m a huge Har­ry Pot­ter nerd, so how could I not buy a tick­et and see it? Hope­ful­ly while I’m there I’ll be able to meet some UK FI blog­gers and learn about the dif­fer­ences between sav­ing over there and sav­ing here in the US.

As you can see, I have a pletho­ra of plans and activ­i­ties to look for­ward to this year. Is it any won­der I live in the future, visu­al­iz­ing lots of fun with great people?

Do you find your­self liv­ing in the future? Do you have any fun plans lined up for 2016?