This is the five-year plan I detailed to my college screenwriting teacher:
I meet Zach Braff's sister (my five-year plan assumes he has a sister -- it does not include checking Wikipedia to see if this is actually the case) at a fine clothing retailer when we reach for the same shirt at the same time. The shirt looks better on me so she lets me have it. I then become best friends with her brother and, by extension, everyone in Hollywood. I parlay this friendship with everyone in Hollywood into a studio bidding war for the rights to my Rock Hudson biopic screenplay (which I have never written or even outlined), in which I would play the role of Doris Day. Upon the film's release, I win all of the awards, have a 5-page spread in Tiger Beat, and am interviewed by Jon Stewart, who kisses me on the cheek upon greeting me. I have to stop answering Zach Braff's texts to get him to leave me alone.
We are not far from the five-year anniversary of the expiration of that five-year plan. Here's my updated five-year plan:
I continue to wake up in the morning. I make enough money to feed my family and keep me in the finest contact lenses. I smile in pictures and in real life. Once a month, I might write something I'm proud of. I perform stand-up like three times a year; my coworkers refer to me as "basically a famous comedian" when clients visit. A thing I wrote in 2011 or something gets picked up and run by the Huffington Post or another aggregator. I do not receive monetary compensation for the piece. I tweet something at Trevor Noah and he favorites it but does not retweet it. Every year I consider starting a podcast, but I don't. Twice a year I consider starting a blog about podcasts, but I don't. My son makes it to his sixth birthday and doesn't even resent me much. He is a motivated, handsome, compassionate genius and has to stop answering Zach Braff's texts to get him to leave him alone.
