How Many Of Us Think We Have Our Life Planned Out

[babydoll34]

You ever think you have it all figured out,The right guy or girl?

The right house you are going to live in?

The right job your going to have when you get out of school?

All these dreams we have through our life, are they just dreams or do we make them come true.


How many of us think we have it all figured out ?

We all need to start looking at ourselves and seeing do we really have it all figured out or are we just taking what we have because we think that is what is good for us.

[void()]

I keep a simple plan on hand. I have no plan. Yes, I have a general heading but do not ever fully chart it out proper. I abide Lennon's quote.

"Life is what happens while you're busy making plans."

Besides that having no plans assures no one may follow me even if I traverse straight lines. I have one haircut and look to be seven different men. :)

N.B: Thus far it works out as best as expected and I'm normally alright where it leads. Then again I'm the sort to make do with what is at hand, do the best I can. People worry too much, don't need the stress here.

[Katja]

I did once upon a time. I knew precisely where I was going and what I wanted from life. Experience has taught me what Robert Burns said in his poem about 'the best laid plans of mice and men'. It affects women too, and am much less focused on ambition and planning, and more on taking life as it comes. I have a general direction I am headed, but planned it is not. This change in me I have found to be much less stressful and far more fun.

[DuckiesDarling]

Sure did, then life kicked me in the ass and asked what the hell was I thinking. Now, I just have to go with the flow, making plans when absolutely necessary but always remembering that plans seldom survive the first challenge.

[sammie19]

I did, but don't any more.

[Realist]

It's painfully obvious to me that what we do when young will affect us for the rest of our lives. My parents never told me anything about life, relationships and careers. They damned sure didn't tell me anything about sexuality! They thought I'd follow in their footsteps, blindly. I farted around for years, impulsive, aimless, and not motivated to learn what was best for me.

I was 30, when I finally went to college and soon after graduating, my whole material life improved for the better. I got better paying, more interesting, jobs and finally began to make some smarter financial choices. But, I continued to make poor relationship choices. Trying to hide my bisexuality from myself and others certainly didn't help any. It's taken me a long time to get peace and love in my life. Like many others, I lament not figuring out the correct path for me, sooner.

Finally, I'm happy, have a lover who loves me the way I need it and I provide the same for her. I know, now, that I should have been more true to myself, because there really are those who can love you for being you! At least, I did find peace and love, before it's too late. Some never do!

People, who figure their paths out early ........and have some direction, are usually much more successful in life, than I was.

Here's to common-sense, intelligent, planning!

[tenni]

I suspect that if we ever think that we have our life planned out in our twenties that by our mid thirties or forties we realize that we do not nor can we plan very tightly. I set goals for myself and when I had accomplished a major goal that I had been focusing on, I realized that other goals were not really completely under my control.

I think that to believe that you have your life planned out is a thought position of the young and naive...to some extent...:bigrin: Short term goals are still worth aiming for. It is also a worth while goal to just go with the flow once you have obtained some successes in life whether material or otherwise.

[darkeyes]

Here's to common-sense, intelligent, planning!

Well.. that lets me out then.. tee hee:tong:

[12voltman59]

I have never had an overarching, "grand plan" for my life---I do sort of in the mode of the old communist countries--sorta break things down into small chunks of say three to five years out---but even then---its just sort of a basic outline, not something set in stone.

I have basically enjoyed the way my life has gone--but I do have to say--I sort of admire those people who were like say age 10, 12, 13, 16 or whatever and said to themselves and the world that "I want to be a doctor, lawyer, actor" or anything else--then they set out to do just that and more importantly did become whatever they had chosen---but then again---I really wonder for most people how viable that is?

If you ask many people----they seem to be well suited to the work they do and such--but it very often was something they did not plan and "sort of just stumbled into it."

I can say---I am always trying to grow and change--to go down "a new road" or "go through the door that just opened."

I guess that it is sort of appropriate that at this stage in my life--I am back running boats on a river---because I have always sort of used the metaphor of a winding river to represent the way my life has gone instead of it being a nice long and straight, smooth stretch of highway as others might consider their lives to be.

I have in the process of "opening one more door" in studying for my captain's license---I have one set of reasons for doing it--which deals as much as anything as one of those things I have long considered doing and probably should have done ages ago. I do hope that it just might lead to new and greater things for me at this stage of my life.

As far as relationships and such are concerned---I have no plans per se to proactively seek out future significant relationships----for me---it seems that if I try to push that--it doesn't happen or doesn't work out----I am just playing "it by ear" and am confident that at the right and proper point in time---I will find "the right person" for that stage in my life and just as importantly--I am "the right person" for them as well.

[Cherokee_Mountaincat]

lol We humans can figure out and plan out our lives all we want, but sometimes God and the Spirits have other ideas for us. So go ahead and plan it out, and live it fully and as full of love and fun as you possibly can. :}
Cat

[lizard-lix]

I have always considered my life to be a lot like the passage of an old fashioned pinball :-)

I have been incredibly lucky in a million ways, and I certainly steer when I can, but if someone told me when I was a teen that I'd be where I am, I'd have tossed my cookies for laughing so hard.

If someone told me 10 years ago I'd be here and doing this, I may have laughed just as hard (life, location, job, lifestyle).

If someone told me a month ago, my wife would say we were going to a swinger's club as my valentines day gift (after 31 years of monogamy), I would have just fallen over, but we went, had a killer good time and life has surprised me again! (we watched and were watched, but no touching others.. yet).

So, no, I never think I had it planned....

Liz

[NotLostJustWandering]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

oh OK, the question wasn't directed to me personally, so it's not quite *that* funny...

The last time I thought I could plan my life, I was a teenager. I was going to be a great film director. Only took one year of film school to realize that in fact I had only been dodging reality, living for the imaginary future, "in the dark" of cinemas, to cop a phrase from film critic Pauline Kael.

Been making it up as I go along ever since, a few years at a time. At times I've been adventurous and chased one crazy dream or another; other times I've trudged along in the doldrums of visionless survival.

My last stretch of that awful semi-life lasted about 8 years. Then I persuaded my boyfriend that we had to give a chance to the idea of moving to Australia as his family had invited us to do. That failed to save our relationship, I couldn't get work, and I wound up in Hawaii, just in time to see the World Trade Center go down and realize that I couldn't even count on returning to my "normal" life in New York. Since then I have tried my hand at farming, caring for the disabled, gotten licensed as a massage therapist, lived in a tent, a treehouse, and my car, embraced Sufism and then Islam, and flown to Egypt on a one-way ticket with no plan whatsoever as to what I'd do on arrival.

Now I live in the land of "inshallah", where the teaching that everything is the will of God serves as a convenient excuse for planning nothing, doing as little as possible and dodging all personal responsibility. Nonetheless guys get married young and raise families (and chase foreign pussy whenever they so much as imagine a possibility exists.)

I've gotten sick to death of this place and plan to return to NYC in six days, going back to square one, flat broke, to chase my newfound dream of bigamous bliss.

You need to find a balance between thinking you can plan everything, and throwing up your hands to the winds of fate, which may refuse to blow for years on end.

I used to think I could never play chess because my mind would reel as I tried to think of every move I could make, every reaction my opponent might make, and every move I would make in turn. Now I realize that not even the greatest chess masters can do this, either. It's not the way to approach the game. You plan a tentative strategy or two and as the game develops, amend the strategy, or toss it out entirely, watching for opportunities to do something different. Life is just the same. I'm still not a very good chess player, but I do love the game.

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