When you’re young it’s easy to imagine what life will be like when you’re older. Then when you reach a certain age you realize that sometimes you don’t have a clue where you’ll be in six months much less five years. I’ve reached that point. It’s kind of annoying.

This story begins in January. Our roommate/BFF, B, got his acceptance into a physical therapy school in Las Vegas which means that he’ll be moving out in May and abandoning us for a couple of years. This also means that our house full of college kids gets a major makeover as The Captain and I move downstairs into the master (top of the hierarchy, baby!), and everyone shifts over a room or moves out. We might be losing one or both of our other roommates, but at this point it’s kind of up in the air—like everything else.

The Captain was all gung ho to join the navy as an officer once he graduated since it provides lots of great financial and societal benefits, but his GPA isn’t high enough to qualify for it. That means that he either has to go back to school for a whole new degree, get a post baccalaureate degree, or enlist instead. He’s going to talk to an advisor once spring break is over to see what his options are, but it’s been depressing for both of us to have this rude awakening. I mean, yeah, he made some poor choices in his early college career and he’s not a super student, but he’s worked hard and genuinely cares about his science.

In addition to that, his lab might be losing its funding and he might be losing his job. Which means we go from a one (and a quarter) income household to being absolutely broke ass college kids. I’ve been thinking about my career options and the best choices for me as a person, and I’m going to try for some bank jobs, look into getting licensed as a substitute teacher, and (if all else fails) retail. I guess that being an adult means you have to put up with the downsides of a job in order to get the benefits, but I don’t want to just be in it for the money. That never works out for me.

Not to mention that all this financial woe and unpredictability has changed our wedding from TBA to TBD. With the way things are going we might end up having that “Five Year Engagement” that I joked about. We’ve talked about just making it legal and then having a ceremony and party when we can afford it, but that’s definitely not what I thought would happen when I was younger. It goes to show that nothing is set in stone—especially Pinterest boards you make when you’re eighteen.

We don’t even know if we’ll be living in the House beyond August because we might be housesitting for The Captain’s grandparents, living somewhere else, or we might have to move back in with someone’s parents. While that idea doesn’t appeal to me, I feel like I’ve learned enough in my year away to actually contribute and not be a lazy couch potato.

It seems like so much of our lives in is flux right now. People are leaving. We might be moving. The Captain might get into the Navy or not. I might go to grad school or not. We might move out of state. There are too many mights for me to fully enjoy life right now. It’s really overwhelming to not have a plan beyond the next few months on how to survive, but we’re going at it day by day and making small goals. After he talks with his advisor then we’ll have a stronger idea of a semblance of a plan (about 12%), but it really bothers my planning-oriented mind to be spinning like this.

I guess the big lesson in all this is that you can’t plan for the unforeseeable future.