This may well be life’s perfect plan…

Life is weird and unpredictable, yo.

I guess you already know that, given you’ve probably been busy trying to figure out your own weird life for at least a couple of years now. Well, at least I hope you have been. If you aren’t finding life complicated and extremely overwhelming, please for the love of [insert favourite deity] get some help.

You aren’t supposed to have it all figured out by now yet. Right?

Well, I certainly haven’t.

Two decades ago

Things in life were messy. I was planning on ending it all. I gave up. Life got too tough and complicated. I had recently graduated high school and had no idea what I had to do next. Before I could formulate a plan, a series of chaotic events occurred in close succession resulting in me being placed in an incredibly stressful and seemingly impossible situation.

Things started to suck, real fast.

Life changed a lot in an extremely short timeframe. I suddenly had to deal with homelessness, physical abuse, I was ostracised from society with no friends or family to help, I was trapped in a holding pattern of constant despair and no matter how hard I planned, the future seemed to be a never-ending road of misery.

So I decided that I wasn’t worthy enough to exist on this planet anymore.

I had it all planned out. It was going to be a 2–3 week step-by-step process. I’ll tie up all loose ends, perfect a cover story to explain my long-term absence, donate what’s left of my belongings so nobody has to clean up after me and then disappear from existence. Once people realised I had vanished, the truth would be revealed and the world keeps on spinning. I felt that I was being smart and considerate to others by making sure that nobody was too inconvenienced by my permanent departure. I just needed to lock in a day to get the plan in motion.

That never happened.

Things just got in the way. Life got in the way. Somehow I obtained new responsibilities and had to delay things. My plan started to unravel and eventually I stopped thinking about it altogether. Damn you self-balancing universe for ruining it all.

Time to change the plan.

A decade later

Holy crap, I’m married, building a house and planning a family. Yep, I tied the knot with some poor sucker. I had the ring, said a bunch of vows and did all that union junk that needed to be done.

I seemingly had figured out a plan as to what I needed to do with my life. I was to be a responsible family man with a respectable career so I could afford a remarkable five bedroom house sitting on a quarter acre block in relatable suburbia. I had a front yard. A back yard. There was even a pool and a shed. I owned inflatable pool toys and a washer/dryer set! On paper life was supposed to be great and it was all going according to plan.

Somehow I went from absolute rock-bottom to owning a wide-screen TV, keeping a well-paying career, owning two cars, having a wife, keeping pets and knew exactly what the planet needed from me. I did everything that was expected. I wore a tie to work. I had the paper delivered. I figured the universe gave me a second chance so I shouldn’t fuck things up. Stick to this plan and eventually good things will come. Right?

Nah.

After years of rebuilding life and achieving status quo, things started to fall apart. I never did feel like I was living my life. I was living someone else’s life but I pushed on with the plan thinking that things will eventually settle into place.

The harder I tried to do things according the way society wanted me to do, the worse it got. My soul started to reject the life I had built myself and eventually it all came crashing down. We got rid of the block of land which was supposed to be the site of our future home, I got rid the wife, the cars, the lifestyle, the new friends, new family and the inflatable pool toys.

Time to change the plan. Again.

Today

Right now I’m staring at a notebook full of ideas I’ve written down for my future trip to North Korea. Yeah, that ain’t a typo. I’m going to the “crazy” part of Korea.

Guess I never really learned anything from watching “The Interview”.

I’ve been working on these plans all day and it’s starting to fall into place. Scribbled underneath my modest budget is the line “Maybe squeeze in Turkmenistan and Pripyat before DPRK?” — Before you find the need to Google, Pripyat is an abandoned city in northern Ukraine. Why was it abandoned? Oh, you might have heard of a thing called Chernobyl. Yeah, I want to go to visit a highly radioactive hole in the ground before I go to North Korea. Fairly sure this is all a dumb idea but I’m a dumbass and am totally excited by it all.

A decade ago I would have laughed at this concept. Travel to a country technically still at war with the rest of the world? Insane. Try to squeeze in a visit to the site of a nuclear disaster? Madness! Two decades ago I wouldn’t have even known where these places were on the map. Today though, I seem to be on a quest of embracing the unknown.

All my possessions today fit in two bags and this in itself is a frustrating thing — I’m trying to cull my belongings back to a single bag weighing less than 7 kilos. Just to clarify, this is absolutely everything. Clothing, toiletries, personal entertainment and whatnot. I don’t have anything in storage and nobody is keeping some of my stuff temporarily till I settle down. I don’t own a TV, or any books, CDs or even a pillow to sleep on. I’m practically a vagrant. Well, a vagrant who carries with him a whole bunch of expensive consumer electronics.

My current life isn’t anything special. At least to me. I’m slowly doing the travel/save money/travel tango whilst working towards being able to move around the planet continuously whilst earning enough coin on the road to not force me to stop and re-evaluate my plans every so often.

I say I’m traveling, however I’m not exactly holidaying. There are no resorts or guided tours here. Well, OK, I’ve stayed in a couple of fancy places over the last year, but this isn’t a regular occurrence. Most people move house every so often. I just am doing it more often than most — whilst occasionally bouncing from one county to another. It is a simple life with no clear goal.

This isn’t to say that I’ve finally figured out how to live life properly. I’m still lonely and every so often I feel like I’m barely keeping it together. Depression still haunts me, but that’s a chemical condition and not due to situational factors. I still have major trust issues and my social skills seem to have regressed. Everything is far from perfect, but I’m cool with that.

Society has conditioned us to live life in a certain format. I’ve rejected that way and have been blindly blundering through existence ever since. Sometimes society makes me feel guilty for taking the road less travelled. Why? Doing my own thing doesn’t affect others yet some choose to vilify my life choices for not conforming to life’s plan.

Man, society is jerkface.

All of this aside, the less certain about what I’m doing in the near future, the less lost I feel. I kinda like this new direction.

Time to stop making plans and and just do shit.

A decade from now

Y’know what? I have absolutely no idea what will happen tomorrow. Well, I mean that figuratively. Tomorrow I’ll probably head to the office, stare at a computer for a few hours, call the bank during lunch and maybe have ramen for dinner. But other than short term goals, the life ahead of me is a complete mystery.

And for once, this doesn’t scare the crap out of me.

In the past, I always had a plan of what things were going to be like in the future. When I was a soon-to-be family man, things were supposedly bright and rosy. I just needed to stick to the plan, reach my intended goal and all the pain will go away. Prior to that when I was completely broken I still had a plan with a clear outcome. I just needed to stick to that miserable plan, reach my intended goal and all the pain and misery will go away. Or something like that.

Hey, guess what? Having plans kinda sucked, so now I’m just making shit up as I go.

Whatever I do, all I know is that if I fuck things up, it won’t be a permanent inconvenience. I’ll be able to just pick myself up and move on towards brighter things.

At least that’s the plan.

Oh shit.