They never ask people on death row “where do you see yourself in 5 years?” Indeed, most of us cannot even see the predicament we are in right now.
I’ve made a game out of it. I get lots of interviews and no job offers anyway, so why not have some fun?
“Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”
- Sitting in your seat while you beg me for another chance at a job.
- Orbiting Jupiter.
- Standing in a breadline.
- Riding a unicycle across a canyon.
- Shaving.
Predicting is impossible, as Yogi Berra said, especially about the future. Sometimes we flatter ourselves and think that we will create our own future. Really? How did you end up where you are now? Is everything going according to plan?
Then how the heck are you gonna make your own future?
Still, just for fun, let’s make a guess, pause for five years and see how we did. Ready?
(Wait. Wait. Not yet. Patience. Getting there. Wait for it. And…we’re ready!)
So, how’d you do?
As you doubtlessly don’t recall, I derisively predicted I’d be 5 years older with even less hair and doing a completely different job, a menial one. I got it right, but I can’t take credit. I stuck with the obvious and likely things. I also purposely kept it fairly vague. Hey, that worked for Nostradamus.
First of all, things change unpredictably in the long run. But 5 years isn’t a very long run and therefore falls into the somewhat predictable future. I knew, we all knew, the world economy was killing jobs and pushing wages down as employers continued searching for the cheapest labor. Third world workers would clearly be making a tiny bit more and first world workers would continue to crash and burn.
So here I am. Doing menial labor. As a grave digger for victims of the Revolution. Pretty damn obvious in retrospect, isn’t it?