I’ve been trying to answer this question for the past few days, and I find that I keep going over it again and again, which generally means that I’m missing something!

As it usually happens, once I admitted that to myself, I struck on the core of the issue, which I’d like to share with you.

When I think about this question, all of my answers revolve around my future wife and children. In earlier attempts at answering, I would set off on a tangent in an attempt to explain why it was only this and perhaps why I did not have anything with my career/work in there… and this is what I kept redoing.

When I finally realized I was retreading the same ground, it came to me that the reason my answers all had to do with my family is that it is the absolute most important goal in my life. If all I ever do with my life is have a relationship with my wife and children that is honorable, noble, honest, courageous, loving, beautiful, wonderful–everything that is sung about but rarely lived–then that will be a life well lived!

For me, vocational pursuits are incidental to that end, or a means to that goal, just like therapy.

It’s not that my career is unimportant, because I believe it will play a vital role in attracting the woman of my dreams, but it is not a thing in itself for me. It is not a pursuit that can possibly be separated from my life with my wife. In fact, it is wholly dependent on that relationship, and I generally view it through the context of such a life.

Of course, at this point in time, I am able to do things that I would not want to do if I was in a relationship–and they are things that I do now, such as working 60 hours in a week for several weeks at a time to get some extra cash. I may still elect to do this when I have found Mrs. Pyrich, but it doesn’t feel like it will be the same kind of decision.

So, to actually put forward answers to this question…

In a year, I hope to be done or pretty close to done with therapy. I also hope that I’ve successfully transitioned to voice acting or have put it to rest.

From one to two years, I hope to have met and started a romantic relationship with my wife-to-be.

From two to five years, I hope to get married and start working out the issues of sharing a life with somebody.

From five to ten years, I hope to have built a firm foundation of honesty, trust, respect, and courage with my wife so that we can have had a child, or (dare to dream) children.

I would like to put a few things into perspective here. First, I am turning 31 in less than a month. This means that the above timespans go all throughout my 30s, and that in ten years–by the time I’m nearly 41–I hope to be married with children.

I do not particularly relish the idea of being in my late 50s when my children are graduating high school and/or college, but it is way better than the alternatives of having had children in my 20s when I was woefully unready (and likely would have brought them great harm), or not ever having had children.

Another thing I would like to preemptively address is that I do not consider this to be an inviolate timeframe. It’s not like I will castigate myself as a failure if I am not finished with therapy in a year (of course, if I did, that would mean it’s time to go talk to my therapist ), nor will I refuse to get into a romantic relationship if I somehow meet the woman of my dreams in, say, June of this year.

This is not about making predictions or giving myself a standard with which to self-attack. This is about building my life to get what I want, and what I want the very very most is a wife and children.

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