When people ask me what I want to do with my life, I tell them I want to live on a spaceship.

A cargo freighter, hurtling through the "empty" space between star systems, alone for years at a time while the galaxy grows stranger all around me. I'd grow out my beard and spend my days walking upside-down through empty maintenance tunnels, boxing shadows and singing at the top of my lungs.

I'd invent meaningless rules that I'd eventually take with deadly seriousness-- "Today is blue day. Do not operate buttons with your tongue." There'd be thousands I'd write and re-write them on a giant pane of glass, with a bar of soap. When not in use, I'd let it drift free through the cargo hold. It could shatter at any moment. This would mean absolutely nothing if it happened, and yet for some reason it would be extremely heartbreaking.

Without a sun or moon of my own I'd decide which hours to sleep, or maybe I'd alternate between states of consciousness until I couldn't tell the difference anymore.

I'd have a room full of plants with automated watering routines because I'm horrible with green things but I love them nonetheless. I'd sleep in here sometimes, or maybe all the time. Maybe I'd only ever be truly awake in there.

I'd have a dog, nothing too small or too big, maybe a Labrador, maybe a robot. Maybe a cyborg, so that it could talk but I wouldn't have to worry about it ever murdering me and taking command of the ship as long as I kept up a constant supply of doggie treats and occasionally threw a rubber ball around.

It'd be cool enough to wear a light jacket but never cold.

I'd set up an old projector and watch eighties movies every day.

It would be perfect.

It's a cover for having no idea what I'm actually doing. And it quiets the tiny voice in the back of my mind that suggests I'm not going to survive the next decade, let alone long enough to see a spaceship.