On Planning for the Future
As if there’s any other kind of planning. It’s not something I’ve ever been good at doing. Actually, that may not be entirely true. I’ve never done it or even tried to plan long enough for it to be classified as successful or not. And therein lies a problem. Not the problem, mind you, I have enough of those without feeling the need to single one out without reason. I cannot attribute my failures or disappointments to any one or any one series of problems I think I have, but they all join forces, like the least fun kind of Power Ranger mech, all to hold me back. While I try to avoid pinning all my negativity on one core character flaw, it would just be unreasonable to deny that some clearly hold more weight than others.
Which brings me back to planning. I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life. Past December, I have no plans at all, and even the ones leading up to that are worryingly tentative. Now, I have often heard things along the lines of, “the most interesting people still don’t know what they want to do at age 40” or “having all the answers about life is overrated”. I don’t disagree with the inherent message of either of those statements, or any of their similar counterparts, for that matter. I take issue with that message being espoused in poorly chosen situations or for people that perhaps are in more need of actual guidance.
That is the position I believe to be in now. I have to say ‘believe’ because, at the speed of change in my life, combined with the likelihood of having to read this again, I don’t want to come across as too presumptuous to my future self. But back to the point – there is a shit-ton of uncertainty in my future, more so than ever before now that I find myself without the relative security of being in the academic system. And so that position I think I’m in is that I feel as though I need to figure a sustainable way to create a certain, regular, productive and fun future for myself, and I have no idea where to even start. There aren’t templates for this, I don’t think, and so that means I have to start doing some long-overdue thinking.
A hurdle I know I face before I even start is the fleeting motivation I’ve written about before on this blog. Being possessed with the inspiration and energy for a specific project or idea, only for it to slowly fizzle out can be extremely demoralising. But there may be an upside. I’m really stretching for a silver lining, because this piece is turning out far more pessimistic than I intended, but that motivation may prove more useful than I thought. There was clearly some intrinsic factor within all of the ideas I chased, however briefly, and if I can find that, or rediscover that motivation all over again, I can start trying to plan a life around it. That seems like a good enough place to start. I know how much work that’s going to be, and I’m honestly dreading it beyond belief, but it’s a roadmap for a potential way out of the uneasy uncertainty I’m far too used to. And that’s more than anything else I’ve got right now.