In a recent job interview, I was asked what my 'plan' was.
I gaped a little. The interviewer expanded, with a careless gesture.
'You know, where do you want to be in five years' time? What's your career plan?'
Obviously, I flannelled something about being more ambitious in a creative sense than in terms of job titles and salaries. But to be honest, I was thrown. And not just because I didn't have a ready answer, but because it made me realise that planning is an utterly alien concept to me.
This is particularly strange because in a work environment, I am a highly organised and rather anal person who hates the feeling that I am flying by the seat of my pants and will go to great lengths to avoid it. Lists are probably my favourite thing ever and if I could spend all day filling in planners of various sorts, I would. So why on earth am I such a waltzing Matilda when it comes to the bigger picture?
Don't get me wrong - I have dreams and ambitions, I have hopes for how my life might turn out, in both a personal and professional sense, and I like to think they are not all attached to the saddles of flying pigs. But have I sat down and actually planned for how I might achieve these things? The answer is no and I think I might have just identified, rather belatedly, where I am going wrong in all this.
Now before I start getting out a spreadsheet with which to chart my projected earnings arch, offspring per annum and number of sexual encounters I intend to have until 23 March 2064 (my estimated departure date based on current health variables) there is something very important to be born in mind here. And it is this very canny old saying:
'Man plans and God laughs'.
If the last eighteen months have shown me anything, it is that the Journey of Life is absolutely full of speed bumps, oil slicks and great big brick walls. Setting your life path in stone before you've even turned on the engine can be a recipe for misery if - or rather, when - things fail to follow the directions precisely and start wandering off on unexpected detours. So flexibility and an ability to go with the flow to a certain extent are just as valuable commodities as the determination to follow your desires.
One of my biggest ambitions - perhaps, in fact, my over-riding one - is to become a published author and make my living that way. But it is also one of the most slippery to grasp hold of, because it just cannot happen unless I am a) good enough and b) able to convince people in the industry that I'm good enough. So that dream is kind of exempt from my new improved outlook on Life. All I can do is try my very best to make it happen by actually writing the damn things, so that is the only course of action open to me on that front.
However, I've realised recently that a certain amount of advance planning might not only help me to achieve the things that are important to me, but it could also make me feel better about Life in the meantime. For example, doing a dreary job can absolutely send you to the brink of suicide if, when you look to the future, all you can see is the same spirit-crushing daily routine stretching out before you from here to the grave.
If, however, you can think, 'oh well, I'm only going to be doing this for two years because in March 2013, I'm going freelance and this is how I'm going to get in a position to do so,' it should make the whole experience feel much more cheerful because you truly believe it is only temporary.
Just a means to an end while you put the mechanisms in place to achieve your true destiny. Whether you are writing a book, saving for an important goal, renovating your house or gaining specialised knowledge to help with your career, chipping away at it day by day can give you a brilliant feeling as you see the project steadily march towards completion.
Financial planning is of course more important these days than it ever has been and this is the area in which I have performed worst of all in my adult life so far. But, following a recent and rather traumatic overhaul of my life, things are finally looking clearer to me now and, armed with a determination to never let things get out of control again, the way forward is opening up to me in a way I have never experienced before.
Throughout my 20s, planning felt rather unnecessary and impossible too, as I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and so spent most of my time bandying from pillar to post. Ironically, just as things began to settle as I turned 30, Life put me through the biggest spin cycle yet and I now face a future which is blanker and more uncertain than ever before.
But you can choose to see a blank canvas either as dauntingly devoid of features, or as an inspiration just waiting to be filled with bright colours and exciting new images. My 2011 diary was chosen for its rather cheesy motivational blurb on each page and one little pearl of wisdom has stayed with me. I forget the exact wording, but it said something about dreams being the best thing ever, made better still by having a solid foundation from which they could actually take flight.
Of course, in order to set dreams in motion, you need to identify exactly what those dreams are. I sense that I am going to have a period of soul-searching coming up, to find out what things I want out of my life in a practical, professional and emotional sense, before I can put those plans into action.
So if I want to go freelance in two years time, if I want to buy that dream house, if I want to take that magical journey around the world, I'd better stop waiting for the lottery win and work out just how the hell I'm going to do it, starting today.
It is high time I applied my talent for trivial organisation to the biggest project I will ever tackle - my one and only crack at Life.
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