When plans don't work out

Fourteen and Sixteen Year Old Me would look at my life now in horror. They’d scream “This isn’t what we planned for you!” but then Fourteen Year Old Me would scream the same at Sixteen Year Old Me.

I’m nineteen now and my life is going quite well. I’ve got a good job in IT, a beautiful girlfriend and I’m surrounded by my family & friends—I’ve even published a couple of books. So you could say I’m doing pretty well for a nineteen-year-old.

Yet I never planned for this. I’d had a whole different plan in mind, just a few years back—so let’s rewind to the 15th of November, 2008. I had just moved house, relocating from ~~sunny~~ Grimsby to ~~even sunnier~~ Hull. I was waiting to restart school in the new term. I had my life planned. I was going to be a chef. I knew it, it was all I wanted to be.

It’s true, I enjoy cooking. I find it both entertaining and relaxing. I’d read Gordon Ramsey’s autobiography—Humble Pie—and it had enthralled me, drawing me further in to this dream. I cooked at home from time to time.

I started school again and I soon realised a truth. Yes, I enjoyed cooking. No, I did not want to do it as a job. It was a hobby, nothing more. I was now in the midst of my GCSEs and I didn’t have a plan and that was okay. Fast forward a couple of years and we arrive at Sixteen Year Old Me.

Oh, he was so much smarter. He knew he was right.“How daft I was to think I’d be a chef”, he’d think to himself—“I know what I’m going to do”. I was going to join the Merchant Navy, that’s what I was going to do. It seemed like my dream job. Study for a few years, work my way up the ladder and make a shit ton of money while travelling the world. Perfect.

I’d applied to the SSTG and Gardline and I was approved. I had to do my A-Levels in Maths and Physics and then I’d head off to do a degree at their school and I’d be soon on my way to working my way up the ranks.

It turns out that Sixteen Year Old Me was wrong as well—what a surprise.

Only a few months in to my first year of studying Maths, Physics & Psychology and I’d decided it wasn’t for me so I finished out my first year. I didn’t have a plan again and that was okay and we arrive at Seventeen Year Old Me.

Seventeen Year Old Me didn’t have a clue. I found a course at Hull College called Next Gen Computing which was supposed to teach me all these various different things in the IT industry. On the first day, I switched to Enterprise Computing instead. What a way to start the year.

Seventeen Year Old Me then made a rough plan to finish this course and then go off to university and

One year later and I’d learned that actually, it was boring as hell and out of the fifteen-odd units I took, I enjoyed about two or three of them. It was a very productive year…

I finished up that year with some BTEC qualification in IT & Marketing. I’m still not really sure what it’s worth or what it means. All I knew was that I would not be returning for my second year there.

That year had finally hammered home a truth for me.

Classrooms do not work for me.

I cannot sit in a classroom, having topics hurled at me through verbal vomit. I had to get out there, feel my away around. I had to make mistakes. I had to royally screw it up. I had to work. I couldn’t just let some fourty-something tutor tell me on a Thursday afternoon that I had read 394 pages of some book by Friday morning otherwise I’d basically be stupid.

That September, I started as an IT Apprentice at CBA Accountants and I was finally learning how I should be.

I’ve learnt a few valuable lessons throughout the past five years.

1. It’s okay to not have a plan.

It’s okay to float your way through life as long as you’re doing something. It doesn’t matter what you do, just get up off the sofa and get out in to the world. There is never a reason to be bored when there is so much to do. Take a class, travel, explore your town or look for a job.

All that matters is that you’re doing something.

2. It’s okay to have a plan.

It’s okay to know what you want and focus on your goals. It’s okay to be fourteen and know you’re going to do this, that and the other. If you have a dream, grab it—don’t just wait for it to arrive.

3. It’s okay if that plan doesn’t work.

It’s great if you have a plan but it’s okay if it doesn’t work out. Not everything will work out for you in life, that’s just life. If you fail at something or something doesn’t work on, move on. Don’t sit around and mourn the fact that you didn’t succeed. Chalk it up to being another life experience and start your search for the next experience.

4. It’s okay if you can’t sit in a classroom.

It’s okay if it bores you or you can’t sit there and listen to some tutor or teacher drone on for hours about stuff—even if you are actually interested about that stuff. If you don’t like sitting in a classroom, it doesn’t mean you hate learning. I personally love learning but school and classrooms.

There are different ways to learn, it’s down to you to find the right way for you.

I’m now at this point in my life and looking back, I’m happy with the way my life has turned out. My plans didn’t work and that’s okay. I’ve got my life ahead of me and I’m going without a plan now because who knows where I am going to be in five, ten or fifteen years—I certainly don’t.