When Your Life Plan Changes
How to navigate the inevitable changing of your life plan and accepting that the world will take care of you and guide you where you need to go.
I came across this draft as I was sifting through half-written blog posts this past weekend. The only sentence written was, “I remember back in May,” and it was saved on October 18, 2016.
Naturally, my first thought was “wtf happened in May?”
In May 2016, I was in the process of packing up my life to fit into my Corolla, clean out my late grandmother’s house that I was living in and put it on the market to begin my new life in DC.
I was very, very confused.
I lost my grandmother the year prior, I was unhappy in my career as a middle school theatre teacher and I was about to leave the only place I had ever known behind as I moved across the country.
In hindsight, I was running away because I no longer wanted to face my current reality. I wasn’t running away from my friends or my family or even my beloved New Orleans, I was running away from me.
I reread the title that I assigned to this post in October 2016 and laughed at all that was yet to come in my life since beginning the draft.
The title was, and remains, “When Your Life Plan Changes,” and boy, has it.
Since moving to the Washington, DC area in June 2016, so much in my life has completely changed. If you’ve followed Powered by Sass for awhile, you’ve witnessed it first hand.
I quit my job and had to start my career all over again. I left my friends and family behind and had to create a new circle of friends-turned-family here. I traveled a lot, all around the US and to Europe. I learned what it was like to have the responsibility of caring for two pets. I learned how to drive on a completely different highway system. I learned where not to park to avoid those pesky Virginia tickets. I learned how to hustle and find work that would pay the bills, but also make me feel like I was using my communications degree. I learned how to practice self-love and self-care. I learned how to navigate the ups and downs of military life. I learned how to cook a lot of new foods.
But, most importantly, I learned that no matter how far away I run, whether it be to the Nation’s Capital or back to the tiny country town where my family lives in Louisiana, I can never run away from me.
And I believe I wanted to for a very long time.
When we’re born, we’re given a uniqueness that, no matter how hard we try to stifle, will just continue to resurface until we finally give it the attention it deserves.
We come with these gifts and these gifts typically guide us toward our interests, college majors and careers.
Sometimes we work hard to reach our success. Sometimes we’re just lucky. Either way, we gravitate to what calls our name and we work at it and we work at it and we work at it some more until we make it. Whatever making it means to you.
When I was in college on the brink of graduation, to me, making it meant being the star in a Broadway show or landing the lead in Hollywood’s next big film. And sometimes I still feel as though that’s the definition of the term.
As I’ve grown older and experienced life’s pleasures, tragedies, triumphs and losses, my definition of making it has totally changed, although the little voice that’s calling my name and guiding my destiny still rings loudly in my ears.
It’a taken me awhile to understand and accept that life moves at a different pace for everyone. It’s taken me awhile to accept that we all have our own paths. It’s taken me awhile to just be and see where life takes me.
I’ve mentioned a few times both here and on Instagram that I have some exciting news to share with you all very soon. While it’s a little too early to share the news, I will say that life has a funny way of bringing you to where you need to go.
Sometimes it operates on its own time.
Sometimes it takes detours.
Sometimes it takes you 1 year and 11 months to figure out what the hell you even wanted to say.
Instead of worrying about where you’re going to be in five years or if you’ll have three kids by the time you’re 38 or if you really should pursue your current passion project and turn it into a career, just go freaking do it.
Go live.
And life will take care with you.
The wind will carry you wherever you need to go, but you first need to have the courage to roll down your windows and enjoy the breeze.
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Originally published at www.poweredbysass.com on April 2, 2018.
