I just attempted to create a 5-year plan—something to guide me along a known, if not steady, course. Aside from being deterred by the non-motivational image of the hammer and sickle, I know my luck with these things, these "plans": They just don't work for me. What does work for me is ... let's call it, "forward thinking". Hypotheses sans commitments. My several minutes of forward thinking resulted in a possible outline for the next 20 to 40 years of my life. I didn't want to get carried away, so I left retirement entirely out of the picture.
If all goes as forwardly thought, I should be in Seattle next year for a quick rest before drifting abroad once again for training as a literacy specialist. Field work (in the Caribbean? in South America? Central America? in the Midwest?) would naturally follow. And then back to Seattle to do Masters work at the UW, concluding with more field work/research and, possibly, a 2-year PeaceCorp assignment in some undisturbed corner of the earth. After that, I could realistically consider doctoral work—which would of course include several more years of field work and research. And theeennnnnn, maybe, just maybe, I could begin thinking about getting a “real” job, “settling down”, living in one place for a while—that sort of thing. Whew. Time flies.