When I was a senior in high school, I came up with a master plan of how my life was going to go and I was going to stick to that plan come hell or high water. I was going to go to my first choice college in Minnesota for four years, get a degree in Health Science, go on to graduate school for another four years and then become an occupational therapist. That was the plan, and I was going to do it without any sort of hesitations, hiccups or hindrances.
Nothing could deter me from the path I had chosen for myself. Not my friends, not my family, not my childhood dreams … nothing and no one. I even had myself convinced that if God himself had a different plan for me, I was going to have say, “Sorry God, but I am not changing my course of action.”
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I knew in my heart that all I wanted to do was to become a writer, but I also didn’t want to live such a financially unstable and unpredictable life. So I found something else I thought I could learn to be just as passionate about: occupational therapy. How I came to the decision to dedicate myself to occupational therapy is another story for a different time, however.
The story I am telling now is about how I failed tragically—and wonderfully—in following my plan. It’s actually a multistep process of failure, with numerous side streets and roundabout turns that could make any person lost, dazed and confused. In fact, I’ve come to learn that most of my life has been a series of failures all woven together in such a fashion that they have lost the appearance of failure completely and have taken on a whole new identity: Me. My life. My character. My essence.
Everything that I am is made up of all the failures I have experienced and how I responded to them.
In regards to my plan, though, nothing has gone the way I told myself it would—which is what the immeasurable “they” told me would happen. I also have done a poor job of withstanding the hell and the high water aspect I mentioned earlier. Sadly, the first part of my plan metaphorically crash-landed into the ocean and sunk to the very deepest part where it still and forever will remain. I spent about four months at my college in Minnesota before I realized that I could not overcome my dislike of snow and I am my best self on the West Coast. As much as I loved the school and all of the remarkable people there, I could not stay.
So I packed my things, said (or didn’t say) my goodbyes, and trudged back to square one, the drawing board, my parents’ house in Oregon. I was at a point in my life where I didn’t want to be in school at all. When I told my parents this, they were surprisingly calm, understanding even. But being the kind and gracious woman she is, my mother told me to think about it. Reevaluate in a week or two. I think it took me about a week and a half at home before I found that I needed school and learning to function. I could not allow myself to get stuck in an in-between state of mind. That’s also how I came to the conclusion that I wanted to transfer to Saint Mary’s.
Now here I am, once again, post-life reevaluation and failing the second part of my plan, which then, in turn, throws the whole thing out the window. About a week ago, I was sitting at my desk at three in the morning, cramming for a biology test. In the middle of memorizing the process of endochondral ossification, I had a moment of clarity.
Science made me utterly miserable. I could not stand another six years of it. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to take biology or physics or anything science related ever again. I didn’t want to go to grad school and I did not want to become an occupational therapist. I just wanted to let reading and writing and words envelop my mind.
I couldn’t pretend any longer that the plan I had made for myself—the one I made when I was eighteen and had very little understanding of the world—was actually what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a writer. I have always wanted to be a writer. Even if I’m terrible at it, I would rather be writing than doing anything else. I don’t necessarily believe in soulmates but if I did, I would know without a doubt that writing is mine.
My one great and transcendent love would most definitely be writing. I have failed at following my less-than-mediocre and predictable plan but only to do something much better. To put it simply, I have decided to follow my dreams.
