"You're so young, you're so goddamn young"

I remember she used to keep her change in a Ziploc bag, her lips moving silently as she counted out quarters from the brown dusted plastic. Believe it or not, it was a cold night in New Orleans. She stood with her arms crossed across her chest, leaning her head out into the street in hopes of a bus. In short sleeves, I jammed one hand into my jeans pocket and smoked cigarettes with the other, trying my best to ignore the unfamiliar cold. At 11:30 Canal Street was dead. The two of us stood there alone on the shadowed sidewalk, our bodies cutting black ovals out of the thick orange glow. She wore a thin ring through her lip and the outside edge of it caught the streetlight in a perfect crescent. I was thinking about her face as a sunset, my shoulders drooping and ready for bed, when she turned to me and said,
"I know this is a pretty cliche question, but where do you see yourself in 5 years?"
I was 25 at the time and hadn't really given it much thought; right after High School I'd touched down on my dream of becoming a contractor and had been working hard at it ever since. My life was scheduled in short increments, measured by the weeks on a job or the time until completion, I couldn't remember the last time I'd thought that far ahead. I chewed my lip as I thought about the question, staring into the darkness, imagining different paths winding out from the present towards my 30th birthday.
"I mean, as depressing as this sounds, I guess I can see myself in pretty much the same place that I am now. Working, saving. Except by that time I'll probably be overseeing my own projects entirely and making alot more money at it. People are always going to need work on their houses, I suppose my role is to provide that service."
I was living in a dusty studio at the time, the walls covered with Hessam Abrishami prints and a little aloe vera plant in the bathroom, and most nights she would come home with me and we'd fall asleep together on the futon. On the whole I was feeling satisfied, if not a little restless, and with a beautiful woman and a steady job I found it hard to complain much.
"But at the same time, if I do that, I know I won't have lived enough. Thirty is alot of years to have behind you without having done anything but work. I would love to travel some. To live in green rolling European hillsides. But now I'm so involved in the contracting company, I've already invested so many hours into gaining experience and credibility, to leave now would be to throw that all away and have to start at the beginning again."
I pulled out my third to last Camel and lit it from a book of gas station matches.
"But from there I have to ask myself, what would I really be working for if not that freedom? I can't buy into that idea of working your whole life so that you can retire at 65, because even if I can have all the freedom and the security in the world, I still won't have my youth. Why doesn't it make sense to do things to opposite way? To live out my passions now while I have the drive and the ability and let the rest worry about itself when it comes?
"But even while I'm thinking and believing that, I still can't escape my fears about money and the future. I always see myself as an older man, cursing myself as a kid for wasting so many years, for not having enough foresight to prepare for life sooner. It's in that way that I'm caught in a pardox; Do I live life now, disregarding the future in the hopes that everything will work its way out? or do I put my dreams on hold in the interest of protecting myself and ensuring stability? It's easy for the young, rich dreamer in me to choose the first option; what else could life be here for if not the exploration of our dreams? But start talking to the people living on the street, underneath the bridges, or the 45 year olds still applying for minimum wage jobs trying to put gas in their tanks and you'll start to see an argument for the latter...