The Golden Age

Recently, I sat down and wrote out the 5 things I wanted to achieve before I hit the golden age of 21. The age where your manhood is verified by being able to say things like "You wanna go grab a beer?" and "Let me buy you a drink". The moment when you are no longer caught in pseudo-adulthood simply because of your inability to participate in America's favorite social pastime. In other words, 21 is a big deal. Rather than spend the next 14 months focusing on the impending legalization of drunken shenanigans, I'm taking the time to achieve all the goals on my list. They are as follows.

1. $10,000 in savings.
I picked the number for two reasons. First, because that amount of money in 14 months doesn't just happen. It's going to take effort and commitment and at that point the money will just become a byproduct of better spending habits and a hard work ethic. Secondly, with that money I can do any number of things. Travel, invest, or help Mom pay for college if the financials go south or the mortgage, who knows, a lot can change in a years time.

2. 3.6 GPA
Pretty self-explanatory but I wanted to strive for 3.5 and if you're going to do something great you might as well aim high right?

3. Europe
This should probably be number 1 but I'm not going anywhere if i don't have the cash or I'm struggling in school. The ideal way I end up in Europe would be through FSU's International Program and I plan on applying this fall when the application goes live. It would be absolutely killer to be able to get credits while I'm abroad. Two birds, uno stone. Additionally, I can't realistically call myself an International Affairs major if I've barely traveled. All else fails with FSU I take money and go myself and hope for the best.

4. Write something for myself
Check. Back to blogging.

5. Take "that" opportunity
I don't know how well I can articulate this idea so I'll try with a story.

Fridays in Tallahassee is house party night. At least I look at it that way. The beautiful night between Purgatory Thursday and 90's night at Standard. The night where my friends come together to hangout and chill at a predetermined location away from the infamous Tallahassee nightlife. One particular Friday we were planning to do just that but we remarked how cool it would be to start at the house and end up somewhere completely ridiculous by the end of the night. Georgia? No. Volusia county? Nope. Palm of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil? Bingo. We all joked and laughed about bringing our passports so we could make it happen. Unfortunately we didn't make it anywhere farther down the street than Waffle House for some incredible sustenance, but the idea stuck and resonated with me. I guess you could call it the "What if? itch". Ever since then I've wanted to be ready to accept a strange, seemingly unreasonable opportunity to do something spontaneous so when I made this list I wanted to include the thought even if it was really vague just so I could keep my head in the right place.

Anyways, I'm hoping to knock out every single one of these by the time I get to the Canaan that is 21. I encourage everyone to make a list and see what you're capable of. Who knows, you might overachieve and end up as head of some multi-million dollar company just because you made a stupid list of productive things to do which happened to open some doors for you.