Go to high school.

Graduate.

Go to college, if you’ve been told you can afford it. (I learned the phrase “job, scholarship, loan” when I was five.)

Graduate.

Start a career.

Get married.

Start a family.

Raise the family.

Something else goes here, the Erickson lifespan development stages aren’t too specific here, there’s a lot of time between here and the next phase. But holy Jesus do kids keep you busy.

Retire.

Be a grandparent.

Prepare for the end, I guess.

***

Today, May 26th, 2026, marks 25 years since the day I graduated high school. I walked in my graduation, I remember little about the ceremony and a lot about the next 48 hours. It wasn’t quite Can’t Hardly Wait, but I did a lot of party hopping and reconnecting with people in strange, unexpected ways right after my graduation ceremony.

I attended Pine Ridge High School in Deltona, FL, and graduated at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach. Naturally, there was some beachside celebrations, although very tame ones because those were the ones where grandmothers were involved. The wilder parties took place back in Deltona, away from the shoreline. I went to one, I don’t even know what I was doing there, I only hardly knew the girl hosting it, but it seemed like there were hundreds of people there, lined up by the pool. I remember the shape of the people standing by the pool, I don’t remember much of what else happened at that party. We didn’t stay there long. Facebook tells me that the girl whose party that was has not had an easy time in the past few years. I hope she’s doing better now.

I love parties and I love socializing, but sometimes smaller settings are better for me. I have distinct memories of going to my friend Jackie’s house, and her brother’s friends talking about all sorts of things, me telling them that yes, I was pursuing music. The brother’s friends watched Reservoir Dogs in the living room, we moved to Jackie’s room. Another friend was asking me to come to the bowl-a-thon. I didn’t have a car so I could not choose the destination, and I’m not sure how I was talking to my other friends, because I didn’t have a cell phone, either.

I went to a pool party the next day, where I was playing a game in the pool and had an issue with a young kid who was playing harder than he needed to, I suppose. I swung my arm around, trying to get him to stop holding onto me and pull things out of my hand and I hit him. It really shook me up, I got out of the pool immediately, and we left not long after that. I felt bad, it was not the sort of thing I did at all, so it sticks out in my brain. There was another party on the docket after that, but I don’t remember it as well.

Graduate high school, check.

***

After graduation, my family moved, only about 30 minutes south, and in August I started college at UCF. It was the closest, cheapest four year university to us, but I would also soon figure out that UCF’s reputation as an underdog and many of the students (and programs) having a chip on their shoulder was very much aligned with the way I perceived myself. I wasn’t incredibly sure about college, despite knowing my whole life that I was expected to attend, but I loved it. I thrived. I worked myself crazy, but I loved every minute. I met hundreds of new friends, I marched in the band for three years and got to travel the world as a result, I graduated with honors, I even got a boyfriend at some point between two degrees and six years of going going going.

Go to college and graduate, check.

I started my teaching career in Broward County, following said boyfriend, in the fall of 2007. I taught middle school band in one school for six years. The boyfriend lasted all of four months into my career, but I kept going. I lived alone for the first time, and loved it. A year and a half after that breakup, I met my husband, just as both of our lives were gearing up into that “everyone is getting married” phase. We went to so many weddings together that we decided we might as well just have our own. We got married in the fall of 2011, with millennial cliches abounding (a bluegrass-type band, mandolins & fiddles, our friends made us their own craft beer, a photo booth, recycled glass jars as centerpieces, a cupcake truck), but it was the absolute best day.

Get married, check.

In 2013 we bought a house, with my mother in tow, and moved up a county. I started a new job, teaching middle school band and chorus, which had actually been an improvement over my first job. I was in grad school over the summers at FSU, and in 2014 I went to London. Three of us girls in our Gower flat in London had definitive plans to have kids pretty much right after we got home, so much that we stood in a hallway one night toward the end of our summer abroad semester and put hands in, counted down, and said “get pregnant!” Thankfully, we all did, bim, bam, boom, by the end of September. Our kids are either currently or about to turn 11 years old, with my (only) child’s birthday in a week.

Start a family, check.

Raising the family is more involved. My mother said for years regarding children, “one is like none, two is like ten.” This proved extremely true for friends of mine, however, we had yet to meet my child. My kid is a one in nine billion, and I would not change my kid for anything. My kid actually asked me a few weeks ago if I regretted becoming a parent, but the answer came to me much more easily that I’d imagined.

“I don’t regret having you for a second. I regret that so many of our societal circumstances make it difficult to be a parent, but I don’t regret having you, I don’t regret bringing you into the world, I don’t regret your existence, and I never will.”

Raise the family, in progress.

Another thing that I regret on behalf of others is that they cannot cease to give advice about how many children a woman should have. I have a lot to say about being the parent of an only child, and my god being at home with a pandemic kindergartner was not something I had prepared myself for, but I’ll save that for another day. Just please, stop asking (in particular a mother) why parents haven’t “given their child a sibling.”

As an elder millennial, we were told that we were the future. We would bring all good things. Nowadays, students at my alma mater boo a graduation speaker who talks about AI being like the industrial revolution and it goes viral. Kids are routinely told that the future is bunk. My kid surely watches too much YouTube but more often than not is pessimistic about the future. I’m trying to help as much as I can. It can be hard, and who knows when I’ll retire myself (although as of next year, I am 20 years in the Florida Retirement System, and 10 years away from officially retirement eligibility).

25 years on from that first milestone in a cascade of them, I am now squarely in the “other stuff goes here” phase of life. You won’t read about that in a lifespan development textbook, but I assure it you it’s where I am right now.

***

So those are the checklists. But life is about more than checklists. I didn’t check off that we sold our first house in South Florida and my UCF alum husband and I returned to Orlando in 2019, less than a year before a chapter of life that none of us expected to see. I didn’t write about changing jobs five times in four years in correlation with the pandemic, including teaching high school general music online. I didn’t write about falling in love with elementary music, although that’s happened in there, too.

I didn’t write about canvassing for presidential candidates, even putting voter reminder hangers on doorknobs for likely Obama voters all the way up to election day in 2008, or watching the results in a Polish bar in Downtown Hollywood with my besite Elizabeth.

I didn’t write about staying up all night, actually working, and watching Homestar Runner web cartoons when I worked for Housing at UCF, and then quoting one of the Strong Bad emails in sync with about a third of the Marching Knights as we walked back from practice. That aspect of my life is at least as important as graduating.

I didn’t write about going on my honeymoon, taking the train from Montreal further into Quebec, and finding only one restaurant open in the afternoon — a French Moroccan one, where my husband and I were the only ones eating, and then it started to snow. The cook ran outside and yelled, “Il naige!!” with his arms upraised and his eyes closed, taking it all in. I hadn’t seen snow since my pre-breakup trip to New York in 2007, and honestly it was a lovely full circle moment.

I didn’t write about going to Art Basel in Miami in 2009 with my husband, where we went to the American Legion hall in Miami Beach, where his friend’s artwork was shown and we found the cheapest bar in the city. We also danced out of the building like we were Cinderella and her Prince, coming down from a ballroom. I remember what dress I was wearing that day.

I didn’t write about taking friends to see David Byrne in Miami Beach, just a year before, with my A+ school bonus money. I have never seen such an enthusiastic and grateful crowd before. I was wearing my JCPenney’s black crash boots, and dancing on the sand after the show.

I didn’t write about learning the ukulele, something I talked to my students about just today, while lying in bed, pregnant with my kid, with a big old belly and the new instrument learning frustration phase. I think my kid got more swearing in utero than actual music. Now I can teach uke like it is second nature, but there’s always a learning curve.

I didn’t write about the trip I took with my bestie Kim for our 30th birthdays, which were within two weeks of each other. We went to Portland and did the Portland things, and our other bestie Sarah booked us a hot air balloon trip. We sort of crash landed back on the ground, Kim fell on me, but it was still a pretty great experience.

I didn’t write about the side trip to Paris that I took, from my study abroad in London, and how I cried when I saw the Eiffel Tower all lit up. Suffice to say, on that docked boat on the Seine, again with Kim, other friends, and my husband’s distant-but-close cousin Sonya, along with some French wine, I got all lit up too, and was not in great shape the rest of the weekend. I did rally, caught my train back across the Channel, and holed up in the FSU London library to finish a big requirement for my master’s degree instead of watching the World Cup Final that night.

I didn’t write about my London FSU crew, walking through the streets, or my friend Andrea, whose son is a month other than my kid, shouting “Argetina!!!!!” everywhere we went. I didn’t write about seeing Les Mis with them, and despite what you may think about the musical, that was the best performance I have ever seen. Ask anyone who was there.

***

I didn’t write about my friend Forest, who was with us in London, and who died by February of that next year. His wife and children had come to London, too, and he told us that his children loved the Princess Diana playground.

I didn’t write about Chris, another FSU classmate, who was killed in his home just a year and a half after his graduation. I talked about it all night and the next day with my bestie Marisa and then I had to bring my band students to be in a parade in the rain the very next night.

I didn’t write about Walter, also a year behind me at FSU, who was good natured, had the best laugh, was an incredible singer, and a huge Tori Amos fan. He died alone in his home in Virginia.

I didn’t write about Jessica, who was a year ahead of me at FSU, was also a mom, also worked in Palm Beach County, and was also a doctoral student. She died last year and I could not stop crying.

I didn’t write about the people who graduated with me that day who we have lost since, including our Prom King, Wayne, who everyone genuinely loved.

I didn’t write about so many others we have lost. My father died in 2002, and my brother in 2022, and I am not ready to write about them yet. I don’t know that I ever will be.

I didn’t write about coming home from band camp in August, the night my father died, wearing my sorority jersey and still having face paint from Accolade on me, sitting in my bra and shorts in my mother’s room, crying.

I didn’t write about the struggle, the self doubt, the wage theft from teachers at the hands of the state legislature, the unbelievable stories you acquire from working in a public school, all of it.

I didn’t write about the imposter syndrome of being a parent, that has only gone away now that the kid is entering middle school. A really lovely day at Legoland during spring break this year helped a lot.

I didn’t write about the anxiety the anxiety the anxiety the anxiety and the therapy and the help I am seeking that I should have sought so long ago. We are not meant to go through any of this alone.

***

I have checked a lot of The Boxes. And that’s not even mentioning how the world has changed since May 26th, 2001. What I realize, more than anything else, is that I am nowhere near the “prepare for the end” phase. Much like a famous musical writer, I have imagined death so much it feels more like a memory, including a night getting lost in the mountains of Pennsylvania, with that soundtrack playing in our rental car and keeping me attached to my sanity until we found our way out.

What I realize, more than anything, is that while there are a lot of accomplishments to come, there is struggle to be had, every single day, and battles to wage in order to keep myself together as well as to act on behalf of the well-being of others.

That being said, I am still in the preparing for the future phase. Preparing for the rest of my career, still learning, still evaluating, still working and getting better. Taking what works and going forward with it. Trying to keep an eye on the future financially, getting out of debt, and making sure I have emergency funds and retirement going forward. While that doesn’t seem like an altruistic thing to do necessarily, it has to be done nonetheless.

And of course, I plan and fight for my child’s future, in a myriad of ways, every single day. I still believe my kid (and other kids) deserve to have a future, no matter what a smattering of CEOs think might work better.

Sometimes I have trouble envisioning the next five years, although less than I used to, and I can hardly imagine the changes that will come as we approach the 50th anniversary of my high school graduation. All I know is that we cannot stop the future from coming, and I promise, at least a little bit of it will be wonderful.

At least, all of it will be worth fighting for.