While I was on vacation this past week ‘ which still blows my mind, considering I really don’t know what I was ‘vacationing’ from ‘ people frequently asked me the same question:

‘You’re a senior in college, so what are your plans?’

Never mind that the week off completely precluded me from remembering that I was in school, but I don’t know what sort of plans they expected me to say. Did they mean my plans for tomorrow? My plans for when I go back to school? Did they mean my dinner plans? Did they want me to bust out my planner to show them what I’m reading at the moment?

I suppose that my planner would indicate that my plans are far less interesting than my dreams, which is funny because I can easily pencil in my plans while dreaming of what I’d much rather be doing. But nobody asks me, ‘You’re a senior in college, what do you want to do? What are your dreams?’

They are simply interested in what’s actually going to get done, the mundane, which I find baffling. Who wants to hear about sending off resumes to insert-company-here? I’d much rather hear about someone who plans to be the first person to salsa dance on the moon, or find a cure for AIDS while salsa dancing on the moon.

It’s funny. When I was a kid, people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, as if whatever I wanted was actually in reach. I always said ‘an actress.’

They asked me the same question when I was choosing a college. I still said the same thing ‘ though, at that point, I was met with ‘but what are you actually going to do?’

I was always tempted to say, ‘be an astronaut or a bounty hunter if that fails,’ but I rebutted that I was (apparently unbelievably) serious about acting.

It was as though it was time for me to make up my mind and be serious, because my childhood dreams were finally futile.

My sister is four years younger than me, and she is frequently met with the question of what school she wants to go to (which, judging from a sibling who has made her way through the SUNY system, may very well be different from where she ends up attending). When she gives her hipster, too-cool-for-you-all shrug, she is then asked what she wants to be. She gives another hipster, too-cool-for-you-all shrug, because she knows that whatever she wants to be isn’t directly linked to where she goes to school ‘ it’s a matter of practicality of plans.

Politely, I don’t sit around asking miserable middle-aged people what they wanted to be, or what they could have been.

And it’s hard to stay attached to dreams when people are only interested in plans.

But I want to know why dreams cannot be akin to plans. While my daily schedule indicates that my plans are to do my laundry, eat a tuna melt, read some classic American literature and apply for some odd jobs, my real life schedule includes honing all of my skills as an actress, picking out a head shot and learning lines ‘ in between the tuna, the laundry and the literature, of course.

But if I told people that I ‘plan to be an actress,’ they would probably laugh. Yet if I read off that litany, it would sound fine.

So that’s what I plan to do.

And if that doesn’t work out, I’m calling up NASA to find the fastest spaceship to the moon. Or at least taking salsa dancing lessons.