As a recent college graduate, I notice how a lot of people my age put stock into the fact that they feel like they need to have a step by step plan to their life, an organized detailed description about what they want to achieve and how they are going to achieve it. Now as most people who know me already understand, I am a very organized person. I make lists all the time, I constantly over-analyze almost every situation, I like trips and events to be thought-out and planned, so I understand that feeling of needing to know exactly what is going to happen, how, when, and why. But the older I get, the more I realize that no matter how much you plan, prepare, and worry, nothing is going to help you predict the future. Life isn't going to go exactly how you wanted it to, and people need to stop trying to prepare for what they are hoping for and start learning how to deal with the unplanned situations life is giving them.
9 years ago I came to Austin and knew after one UT football game and then later that year a week at SXSW that I wanted to live here someday. I had other goals, barriers, mistakes, successes, and so much more things I had to accomplish before I could get here. I watched my parents go through a divorce, I graduated from high school, passed up an opportunity to go to UT Austin to take a full scholarship to TJC and save my parents (and myself) money. I broke girls hearts. I had mine broken. I graduated from college. I took a job in Austin that I ended up hating and I quit. I was almost completely broke with bills stacking up. But through all that I managed to achieve everything I set out to and ended up exactly where I wanted to be: Living and working in Austin doing a job I don't dread coming to, making enough to support myself on my own, and being an independent, hard-working college graduate with my whole life in front of me.
My point is, yes it is important to have goals, to try to achieve things, to better yourself. But while doing those don't ignore the path it takes to get there, and understand that it isn't going to go how you planned it, but that doesn't mean you still can't end up exactly where you set out to be. And maybe along the way you may realize that how it happened may not have been perfect or the way you had dreamed it would be, doesn't mean it didn't happen even better than you had planned it, and helped form and mold you into the person you are today... versus the one you had thought you'd be a decade ago. And in my case, I think that's a really good thing.
9 years ago I came to Austin and knew after one UT football game and then later that year a week at SXSW that I wanted to live here someday. I had other goals, barriers, mistakes, successes, and so much more things I had to accomplish before I could get here. I watched my parents go through a divorce, I graduated from high school, passed up an opportunity to go to UT Austin to take a full scholarship to TJC and save my parents (and myself) money. I broke girls hearts. I had mine broken. I graduated from college. I took a job in Austin that I ended up hating and I quit. I was almost completely broke with bills stacking up. But through all that I managed to achieve everything I set out to and ended up exactly where I wanted to be: Living and working in Austin doing a job I don't dread coming to, making enough to support myself on my own, and being an independent, hard-working college graduate with my whole life in front of me.
My point is, yes it is important to have goals, to try to achieve things, to better yourself. But while doing those don't ignore the path it takes to get there, and understand that it isn't going to go how you planned it, but that doesn't mean you still can't end up exactly where you set out to be. And maybe along the way you may realize that how it happened may not have been perfect or the way you had dreamed it would be, doesn't mean it didn't happen even better than you had planned it, and helped form and mold you into the person you are today... versus the one you had thought you'd be a decade ago. And in my case, I think that's a really good thing.
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