My cousin who’s just a year older than I am (I’m 26 he 27), and someone I’ve always viewed as a peer is soon getting married and has just bought a house in suburbia California.

On the other side of things I’m enjoying single life, go out every weekend, and am renting a place in an area filled with frat boys and people reliving the college life on a daily basis.

He’s on track at his company to move up the ladder once/twice a year and steadily grow his income, I’m at a startup with friends in which we all quit our jobs for to pursue, something none of us had had any experience in doing so before.

In short, in 5, even 10 years my cousin can pretty knows exactly where he’ll be at in life: at the same house, same job, with the same girl.

For me, other than (hopefully) being at the same job–though our company will likely be drastically different than where it is today–probably living in a different place, with my relationship status up in the air (insert spider joke here) in probably less than a year.

In fact I can hardly predict where I’ll be in 1-2 months, much less the next decade.

And I cannot possibly imagine it any other way.

It scares the heck out of me to have my life planned out to the point that in a year I’ll know where I am, to the point that I really don’t want to buy property of any sort or even sign a year long lease.

I have other friends who I went to high school with who are in Ph.D/MDother graduate programs as well as being engaged, which is just baffling to me, to know that you can point to a calendar sometime in the future, pick out a date, and accurately describe that day for them.

The question is then, at what point does/did life become predictable to you, and is it intended to be intended to be this way? When do you know you’re ready, and do you wish that you had waited further?