January 2022 Quote: Change in Plans
“Maybe if life looks nothing like you planned—you’re on the right path.”
– Atticus Poetry
To those whose plans look a little different, so your life look different than you thought it would. I know the feeling. If you read my Favorite Lessons and Moments of 2021 towards the bottom, I discussed how the past few years felt like this big I don’t know from what I thought my life was going to be. It’s just like the Taylor Swift lyric: “How can you know everything at 18 and nothing at 22?” Gosh, she released that at the best time because I could not relate more.
When I was 17 turning 18, freshly graduated from high school and a freshman at my local university, I thought I had it all figured out. I was going to dorm and study education before getting into the education college at my university for the last two years of college. Then I would do field work/experience my last two years before graduating in 2022. Then I thought maybe I’d take a year off from college to travel to Europe or go around the world. Another option was to work straight out of college as an elementary teacher so I can help pay for my college debt I’m sure stuck in now. The third choice was I was going to take a year off break and focus on writing and querying manuscripts of stories I have always wanted to write but never had enough time or attention to dedicate to during the school year. In that year I could fully focus on my craft and finally work on stories that have been precariously pouring out of me in my dreams and thoughts. Then if writing worked out, I could go teach for a year and write during my breaks or the summer. Or if writing didn’t work out, I could write during breaks and the summer and keep trying to query and write stories. Either way, I had ideas for what I wanted to do.
Now that I am a senior in college—going into my last semester— I have no clue what I’m going to do.
I don’t know anymore.
After the last few years, I really don’t.
Things changed beyond I could have ever thought, and so every idea or timeline that I thought for myself, poured itself, but off a cliff and into an abyss I can’t see pass or through. So, now I’m here standing on the precipice of my future, with nothing to hold onto, nothing to see, but this wash of water trickling into the abyss, wondering what happened and if things could ever go back to what I thought was going to be the plan.
I’ve had to grieve and accept that what I thought at 18 isn’t what is going to happen anymore. It was hard for me to let go of some of my ideas and plans because I still want to do them, but with the state of the world, I feel like I have to push them aside. I want to still travel. I just don’t think it’s the time right now. I still want to focus on writing, but I don’t know if that’s what I should do after college. I want to be a teacher, but I don’t know if I want to work right away because I feel like if I go straight into working, I might not stop and do all the things I always wanted to do. So, there lies my new dilemma.
And I’ve been reaching through air to figure out what might feel right.
I have nothing so far. Not a single clue to what would be right for me.
The other day, I was on Instagram as one does when you’re bored and you have no one to talk to but yourself and your raging mind, and this quote was at the top of my feed.
I felt like I stumbled back on the precipice and the debris that fell, spelled out these words in its grayscale glory.
I felt like this was the thing I was reaching out for—a sign.
I saw it.
I heard it.
I felt it.
I knew it.
And I looked up, away from my screen, and sat there, thinking about how I read this exactly when I needed to. It’s crazy how some things enter your life at the best time. This was one of those magical, surreal moments.
Because here I was just thinking about how I felt like my whole life changed these past few years—quickly and irreversible and unknown—and how I felt wronged in some ways because it was never what I thought it would be.
But then I was reminded that maybe that’s okay.
If my path didn’t look like what I planned, it’s okay—-maybe it’s the right path. Maybe it’s a better path.
Maybe it’s the path I didn’t want, but the path I need.
Maybe it will work out and I just can’t see it yet and that’s okay.
Because didn’t someone say that you can’t plan your whole life and that plans change?
Plans do change, I just never thought they would change as much as they had for everyone in the last three years—unmoored and shifted to this whole new world. But maybe plans can change this colossally because things needed to change. When the world changes, everything else in the world changes with it—-the oceans, the rivers, the sky, the sea (I’m not just talking climate change 😅) it’s people, the dynamics, the mountains, the paths.
The paths also shift and a new one is waiting for us to step on it and trust that it will lead us to somewhere.
Somewhere where we didn’t or couldn’t allow ourselves to see because we were too focused on the plans we had.
But now we have new plans. Plans we can’t see in that dark abyss. But it doesn’t need to be scary.
It can be exciting.
It can be exhibiting to take the plunge and let go of the past plans to see what the new plan is.
We don’t know what’s going to happen in the next hour, day, month, or year. Things will change, paths will form, and we choose to travel down it or stay stuck on that precipice, holding ourselves back because we don’t want to go down this new path, hoping the old one will find it’s way to us. Maybe it will, most times it won’t.
Take the road less traveled by. Or take the plunge.
Maybe we create plans to show us exactly that things might not always work out and when we look back on how we thought we had life all figured out, we realize that we never did. That’s okay. It’s going to be okay with whatever happens and we should trust in it.
So this is my remind and maybe it can be a reminder for you too; That if you had all these hopes, dreams, and ideas for what your life would be, but they are not how they turned out to be, it might have not been the path you needed. The right path will present itself to you as it should at the right time. Who knows? Your path might still include everything you hoped, dreamed, and pondered but in a different order or capacity. Don’t give up on those dreams or think they might never come to fruition. Set them to the side and come back to them later— a different path.
Life’s a path, a swim, a ride, a journey.
I’m talking my first step, knowing that I don’t know what’s to come.
But that’s okay.
And it finally feels right.
Here’s to your journey and steps,
As always, with love,
