Self-reflection meme

[azekeil]

Has your life gone the way you expected it to? What did you imagine your life would be like now when you were a child? When you were a teenager? Shortly after education? Somewhere between leaving education and now?

If it's different to what you expected, why?

What about your life in the future? Do you think it will actually turn out that way, or do you think it will be different? Why?

Comments

[sepheri.livejournal.com]

Has your life gone the way you expected it to?
Not at all. Yet in some ways, yes.

When I was a child I was an actress. All my time that I wasn't at school was taken up with acting or classes. I thought that by now I would be living in London, maybe I would have done some Shakespeare at Stratford. I would be working through the theaters, I didn't expect to be super rich and famous but I did think I would be in regular work even if it would be a struggle.

After that started to fade I thought I would go to uni at 18 just like everyone else. I'd leave at 21, get a job in whatever field I was studying, by a house a few years later then be having children around now.
I didn't even start uni until I was 21 so that wasn't going to happpen either.

Then when I was at uni I thought I would finish that, spend a year working on finding myself a job in textiles, move out, marry the guy I was seeing, spend a few years maybe travelling with my job then have children.

They that guy broke off our engagement and I had a shocking realisation.
I had spent so long making plans for my life that never worked out so the only way forward was to stop planning and embrace whatever oportunities come along, after all, it is always the most unexppected things that bring the most pleasure.

A few days after I made that decision, I fell in love with Rodney and my life changed entirely. I have done things in the last 18 monthes that I never would have thought I would have had the chance to do, been places I never would have thought I would see and its never ending.
Life it better when you stop trying to follow a plan and embrace whatever you are given.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Gosh, well it just goes to show different approaches are all completely valid for the right people :)

I've always maintained that I needed to have a plan, to keep a focus, to ensure I manage to achieve and maintain a career that I could enjoy and that would provide for me, and by and large I've been fairly successful at that.

I suspect rodneyorpheus would say the same sort of thing, do you think?

I'm wondering.. it sounds like you made specific plans locked to a timescale, which you considered a failure when those timescales were missed, so you changed your plans.. I've had a general focus, and although I've put timescales to things (I wanted to contract for 3 years, then buy a house), I've still stuck with the main plan when they've fallen through.

Mind you, I didn't have such specific plans as you in the first place!

[sepheri.livejournal.com]

I don't know what he would say, you'd have to ask him really.
I do know however that he encourages me to explore things, to not tie myself to the belief that I must have a plan right now, that there is anything that I should be doing.

I am happy in what I am doing right now so why should I be planning for something else? If I become unhappy then I will seek out something new and I believe in my own abilities to find whatever that may be.

It was not just time scales that stopped plans. I stopped acting because I was very ill and being bed ridden can give a person a very different perspective on life and what is important.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Yes of course, illness, amongst other things, does tend to change your perspective on things..