Actually, no I don’t! And that’s okie dokie.

Or is it?

I’ve often wondered if I should have a plan for my life. Looking at other kids as I fumbled through my teen years, I wondered how they could have such direction for where they were headed. When asked, “what are you gonna do when you grow up?” they had a response all lined up. Whereas I did not. And while that didn’t usually bother me, there were times in which it did.

Don’t get me wrong, there were times I declared I was going to become a veterinarian, a teacher, a mad scientist, or what have you. But I’m talking about actually putting those ideas into a plan that would eventually be put into action. I didn’t really do that. Well… I didn’t really do that deliberately (and with great malice of forethought 😜).

I was, and still am, a tinkerer. Someone who takes something apart to learn how it works, puts it back together, and eventually builds off of what was learned from the experience. I did this especially with computers and, more specifically, the internet. Eventually, this led me to become a freelance web developer. That wasn’t a conscious plan that I had devised, it just happened.

Also, while I didn’t haven’t yet become a school teacher as I declared as a kid, I did end up teaching in other capacities. I was a music tutor, paddling instructor, and even ran workshops/programming while employed as a librarian. The desire to learn and then share that knowledge, as a teacher does, stuck with me and it ended up naturally influencing my trajectory in life. So while there wasn’t a plan per se, there was an underlying driving force. Yanno?

So you don’t always need a plan, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan at all. Right? I honestly don’t know. Though, I do think that’s mostly true. Life is the great unknown. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future and even the best-laid plans are subject to change. Sometimes you don’t have a plan, but you do have a goal—something that you strive for. I think goals are kind of the building blocks of a plan, though. Think about it; if you have a goal, you’re going to keep adapting your plans so that you can realise that goal. The plans change, but the goal doesn’t. But without the goal, you wouldn’t have something around which to plan.

Do I have a point to all of this? Not really. I’m just thinking out loud.

At this point in my life, I have no clue what’s next in the bigger picture. I have some short-term goals and a few long-term goals with very few solid plans. Things keep changing (yet remain the same, somehow) making it hard to lock-in anything. But I keep moving forward! Sometimes less boldly than I’d like, but that’s just the way things are right now. Things will happen. Things are happening. But without a plan, I’m not entirely sure what’s happening.

We’ll have to wait and see.

Enjoy the ride!!

M3