Some people try to plan out their whole lives. Finish their degree in year whatever, blah blah internship, travel, start having babies at this point, and so on. Other people appear to drift, or be more spontaneous, planning nothing. Perhaps some people have clear direction in one aspect of their lives, but accept that they’ll take their chances in other aspects. Then maybe there are people who claim to have few plans, or perhaps don’t actively think about them, until something contradicts the vague life-picture in their heads and they have to think, I guess I did have a plan.
Do you plan? How far ahead, if at all? (i.e. a week, a year, ten years, fifty years…)If you planned a ‘life schedule’ of sorts when you were younger, do you find that this was useful? Are you still ‘on schedule’? Are there any planners among us who deliberately through away the plan?
I didn’t plan out a schedule, but about 15 years ago I wrote a list of all the things I wanted to accomplish before I died, in no particular order. I’ve since lost the list, but occasionally I’ll do some new thing and will realize- hey, that was on my list. I guess I can cross that off.
I don’t make long term plans. I had a career plan worked out when I started university but after that went belly-up (major family drama & mental ill health were large factors) I had to drop out and instead got a job in admin.
Current job only pays well enough to get by until the end of the month so no real chance to save money for any long-term plans. About the only thing I have figured out is after I’ve gained more experience in admin and the job market stabilises I’d like a better paid job in the area. If I achieve that I can work out how much money I can save per month and start to think about either going back to university or perhaps going travelling.
When I was in high school, I had all these great plans! I was going to go to school, finish early, get a great job and make tons of money. I was going to move somewhere with cooler temperatures, get married, and retire in 10 years living the easy life.
News Flash
That didn’t quite work out.
I’m not complaining, my life is fine with what I suppose is the normal up’s and down’s of being a grown-up.
I did go to college, and that is where things got off track. In my 2nd summer of school, I hurt my back pretty bad and ended up taking a semester off. I still finished a semester early, but at the time I saw this as a wrench in my master plan. Before graduating, I broke up with my girlfriend of three years, so marriage was out at that point. I was unemployed for six months before accepting a job at K-Mart unloading the trucks. During this time I also met a girl, got engaged, and eventually got married! We moved to Texas, so the cooler temperatures was out. I realized that I find the field I studied interesting, but actually can’t stand doing it in a professional setting. So I gave up the hopes of “big money”, which I now realize isn’t everything, and became a teacher. I am probably not going to retire in ten years, but my wife and I still buy the occasional lottery ticket.
I have given up on the specifics of my life plan. It seems that if I try to plan for something, the opposite will actually happen. I told that to my parents a while ago and they welcomed me to the real world.
When I was in high school, my life plan was detailed and specific, and included timelines that stretched out about 5-10 years. “By age X, I’m going to be doing Y; then, by age Z, I will be doing ABC.”
When I got to college, the life plan became slightly less detailed and more flexible and open to “shit happens.” “Sometime after graduation, I should get a job.”
These days, I have a sort of generalized life plan, but not really. I’ve met most of the major goals, so now I’m just working on bucket list stuff, none if which has any specific timelines attached.
There is another aspect to the Life Plan, and that is what do you do after you meet all your goals? Every one of them?
I met all my goals in life last year. You’d think that would be good, right? You know, I’ve sort of felt a sense of being…I don’t know, I really, honestly don’t know how to describe it. Like I’m now sort of running out the clock? So I try to develop stretch Life Goals. But they don’t seem as interesting.
My life plan (or expectation) after graduating high school was really, really boring and I’m actually glad it didn’t work out.
If everything went as planned I would have got a degree from a local university, got a job locally, met a girl locally, bought a house locally, had a family, and all my friends would be people from the same town.
Instead I got my degree, left town, worked different jobs, lived in different cities, met tons of people from all over the country, stayed single until my 30s, got married, moved across the country, bought a house and had a kid.
I have no idea if I’ll have the same job or be living in the same city 5 years from now and that thrills me.
I’m at the point where my life plan requires a second party in the form of a husband, but I can’t sucker anyone into joining me. So the plan is sort of on hold until The Management can fill that position.
Loosely. I graduate from college in the spring, and I have a sense of the sort of job I want and what region of the country I want it in. And I do plan to go to graduate school after a couple-three years, and maybe teach at a university afterwards. Maybe in Las Vegas; they’ve got a good program and I know a faculty member who says he’ll pull for me. But nothing set it stone. Relationship-wise, no, I have no plans beyond having kids, maybe, eventually, if there’s a woman involved who wants 'em too.
This. I should be done with grad school in three years (I hope). Beyond that things get pretty fuzzy. I’ve got some options, but whichever option makes the most sense is highly dependent on whether I ever manage to get married.
So I try to develop stretch Life Goals. But they don’t seem as interesting.