I’m willing to bet that most of us are living a life that, in some form or fashion, would surprise the 25-year-old version of us.
(Quick acknowledgment to Shocker and other TNOCS members who may not yet be 25.)
The surprise might be personal, relational, professional or all three. Suffice to say that, as John Lennon mused in “Beautiful Boy,” “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” What intrigues me when I meet people is learning more about the ways their lives have unfolded and how they’ve responded to the times when their journeys took them places they didn’t expect to go.
That fascination came naturally for me, as my family moved around a lot (for a family that wasn’t connected to the military or the diplomatic service). Even before my parents’ divorce in 1972, we had lived in five different residences (four in the Chicago area, one in Baltimore). Before I went off to Indiana University Bloomington, my brother, sister and I lived with my dad in four more; every other weekend, we lived with my mom, who lived in the mid- to late ’70s in a half-dozen complexes or apartment buildings. I became used to different neighborhoods, schools, churches, friends, homes.
If you’re going to moonlight, do it up right.
As a result, being able to move from Plan A to Plan B (C, D and on to Z) became second nature. Although I enjoy being able to stick with the familiar (hubby and household, to name a few), adjusting to circumstances doesn’t throw me if I can get my emotional bearings. That may account for how I segued from newspaper journalism to high school counseling – two careers that seem to have little in common. After all, one is all about informing the world, while the other prizes confidentiality. In one, I worked with folks my age or often decades older; today, I spend most of my time with students and co-workers decades younger. (Recently, we had a good laugh when our office microwave died and I brought in a perfectly functional one from our shed, one we realized was older than most of my colleagues.)
In both worlds, the newsroom and the counselor’s office, it’s important to be “on,” ready to adjust to a situation and respond in a way that edifies and satisfies. Both careers prize listening to and appreciating the stories of others. Being a stickler for detail helps.
As a copy editor, I made sure reports were accurate and headlines I wrote were fair summaries. As a counselor, I learn to pronounce students’ names, know their nicknames, pronouns and priorities, and check to understand whether I heard them correctly. (That became even more vital after learning of my significant hearing loss a few years ago.)
Longtime friends and former colleagues ask about my current career, and I honestly tell them I’m grateful to have had two careers I’ve loved (I know some people haven’t had one ). Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure the 25-year-old me – an assistant state editor at the South Bend Tribune and a single, still- closeted young adult – would have been shocked to see himself as a cardigan-wearing counselor at an urban high school in North Carolina, his desk bearing pictures of his three cats and his husband of almost 30 years (well, husband for almost 8 – the copy editor within gets hung up on that technicality).
So what about you?
Would the 25-year-old you recognize today’s version? Tell us about both and share pics if you want (consider this the tnocs.com version of the popular social-media meme). How did plan B, C, D … Z work for you?
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It’s a great question. Wish I didn’t have to answer it, but, in respect to our author…
I’m pretty sure that the 25-year-old version of me would be disappointed in mt v.2022.
It never occurred to me that I would need a plan B, C, and/or D. I always thought that “A” would be fail-safe. Not so much.
And although I’ve been incredibly fortunate overall, there are many past forks in the road that I think about. I wish I could get a do-over for a lot of them. It’s not always the best feeling.
The way I get around it is that I try to forgive my younger self as often as possible, and figure that, ‘we are where we are’, and try to be mindful and thankful for the journey that not only has brought me to where I am, but also to wherever I may be going.
I know no one can speak for you, let alone you at 25. You do need to know there’s a large community of folks who do not consider you in any way a disappointment. Thanks for creating this forum for me to remind you of that!
I kinda like the younger mt58. He made the current mt58. I think we owe him a standing O.
Second the sentiments of Chuck and Bill. Current day mt draws a lot of water in these parts. You the opposite of a disappointment — which I guess would make you an appointment. And I have a standing appointment 3 times a week (with many more drop-ins along the way) to mingle with you and the crew you are helping to cohere.
Love yourself, which allows you to forgive yourself, which opens you up to projecting openness and curiosity out into the world. (Been reading Pema Chödrön lately, so forgive the tone if it rubs you the wrong way.)
You’re all good in our book dude.
25-year-old me was a go with the flow kind of guy with few expectations. Everything since then just sort of happened. He, and I, believe plans have a way of changing. Accept those changes as they come.
I’ve never had a Plan A so there’s never been a need for back ups. I can’t say if 25 year old me would be surprised at how things have turned out as I had no idea at that point as to where I wanted to get to. A lot has happened in the 21 years since. I work for the same company but I’ve changed jobs with them 6 times in completely different areas. None of them was part of any grand plan, 2 were completely by chance as new departments were created and I was asked if I wanted to be involved without the need to apply. Even the roles I’ve applied for were as a result of seeing an internal advert and thinking it might be time for a change. Its fair to say I’ve been quite happy to just drift along.
The one major life decision I planned was to take a year’s sabbatical and travel. I did that at 28, thinking that I was single and renting a flat so it was now or never while I wasn’t tied down financially or emotionally. Travel is the one thing that I love to plan, though even with that year off I would change my mind on a whim and decide to go somewhere else or just get on an overnight bus and see how things looked wherever I was the next morning. It didn’t always work out, like the time the bus terminated at Chihuahua bus station at 4am with a long wait for anything to open and then having waited and taken in the town I decided to jump on another bus and go somewhere else instead.
I met my wife when I was 29. 25 year old me would be pleased I finally got that sorted though the prescence of a mini J would be somewhat surprising. At 25 I was content to live without any responsibility and the idea of having a child hadn’t even entered my conciousness. That’s been an immensely rewarding though at times hard journey and being responsible for a little human has been full of surprises. To quote another John Lennon line, nobody told me there’d be days like these, strange days indeed. Seriously, the amount of poo you have to deal with, that wasn’t in the brochure. Even now at 10 she can’t / won’t flush so that’s always a surprise finding those nuggets lurking.
Maybe I’d have a better life if I planned and thought through everything but to be honest I’m OK with things. Not everything has worked out and with hindsight there are other decisions I could have made at times but none that keeps me awake at night. Here’s to the next 25 and whatever happens in the meantime.
I think the poo was most definitely in the brochure, you must have skipped the fine print. 💩
HehHeh, heh, y’all are saying ‘poo’.
Wait, was there another topic????
25-year-old me thought his life couldn’t get any worse. He had a crappy low paying job that he was about to lose because his truck was about to blow its engine, and the 20 mile commute across the bay was a bit too far to walk. He’d be amazed to know that 26 years later he’d be employed at home doing easy yet fulfilling work, married to a beautiful woman, and raising a girl who’s about to leave single-digits (Lord help me). Like some of the others here, I haven’t really had a plan at all (looking back I can see that a lot of opportunities just kinda fell into my lap), but I wouldn’t change a thing.
I pretty much stopped having a plan as a sophomore in college. I graduated on the 7-year plan, the last couple of years of which I was already working as a Tech Writer.
About Plan B:
That graphic is great! What comic is it from?
Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #541
25 year old me would never have recognized today me. Back then I was a retail manager, ambitious, married but not planning on any kids, living in an apartment in the city. Since then, a daughter, a move to a very rural area, and several years working part time while home schooling my daughter (25 year old me had never even heard of home schooling). Then a second career teaching math to struggling learners. Never saw that coming. The only thing that I anticipated is that I would still be married, and I still am. 45 years in August.
I also think of a song, “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Not that I am in any way comparable to the subject, but there’s that one line, “You’d have managed better if you’d had it planned.” Maybe I would have. But I think it turned out okay. Not much that I would change at this point, even if I could.
Like you Chuck, I’ve moved around a lot. I just added it up, I’ve lived in 19 different residences (dorms, apartments or homes) in 11 different cities since I graduated from high school 30 years ago.
With that much bouncing around, I find I’ve accumulated a lot of good acquaintances but no lifelong friends. Not saying it’s a regret, just a consequence. My immediate family (wife, son and I) are pretty tight-knit and self-contained. I’m sure there are more moves ahead yet, but hopefully not more than 1 or 2 left…
I’ve learned to be adaptable and get into the groove of different cultures, climates and lifestyles. That’s my wealth. Can’t complain.
As far as my 25 year old self, I don’t think he would be disappointed or thrilled or surprised. I did not have a set path in mind, just a moral compass and vague sense of what I wanted to be doing. And more or less I’m doing it, whatever IT is.
25-year-old me would be surprised and sad to see those old dreams of a life in academia to be set aside, to see my disillusionment with the system, and to see me on a much more pragmatic professional pathway within the federal government. But beyond that initial shock, I think he’d also be relieved to know that such alternative paths exist, and would appreciate my (our?) ability to adapt to changing situations as needed.
I’ve always been able to retain great amounts of information, and that has really powered my success in academic and applied research. I’ve also always been a quite open and adaptive person, so this has helped me to steer along with shifting winds of opportunity, and that’s ultimately a good thing. But, over time, there has come to be a byproduct of those tendencies: I have some chunks of now-discarded fields of expertise.
For instance, I spent 10 years doing neuroscience research. I thought there would be opportunities to apply that knowledge set to a federal job, but it didn’t work out that way, due to weird quirks of purview. So that information and expertise has been collecting dust in my brain for the past 6 years! Again, I am grateful that I’ve found a successful pathway, but it’s just one of the costs of being adaptive.
I sometimes feel like I’m adapting so much that I am no longer the person I was. Of course, quite literally no one is the same as they were in the past. Probably none of the atoms of my 25-year-old self inhabit my 40-year-old body. Still, we humans need a coherent narrative of the self through time. Certainly my adaptability has been a coherent through-line in my life story, but it sometimes makes for some choppy transitions between chapters.
Is there an editor in the house???!!
>Is there an editor in the house???!!
Yes.
Do you need one?
No. You’re good just the way that you are.
Dude, I was also contemplating a life in academia. Then I saw both in undergrad and grad school the relentless grind from some of my professors hustling for tenure and NOT getting it despite working 70-80 hour weeks for years on end. I knew that wasn’t for me. Academia can be secretly a sneaky political profession, and it’s ugly the closer up I saw it.
So I spent a couple of years abroad kind of finding myself, then ended up in federal gov’t like you Phylum. I feel like I found this secret unknown program where I can do tangible good for real people, that’s totally off the radar.
Anyway, it’s great not to be the same person you were (I was) at 25. Who wants to be that person stuck in the past, reliving the “glory days” long past your expiration date?
Be who you are. Not who you were.
My wife was a molecular biologist working in a research department at a large university. She discovered the first instance of a particular tomato virus in the US. Oddly enough, she found it while we were in the garden department at Home Depot on a Saturday afternoon. She bought the plant and we went straight to the lab so she could run some DNA gels on it.
Of course, her boss took the credit, and that’s one of the reasons why my wife was a molecular biologist.
Yeah, I agree. 25-year-old me was riding high on what would amount to be the last gasps of the old way. And not just in my career, but on the national level: this was the early Obama years, and things seemed so optimistic, like we were turning a page for the better. I would learn that many things were a lot less rosy and assured than I thought they were. Those aren’t fun lessons to learn, but they’re important.
Idealism is a trap that leads to cynicism. I’ve since learned that the best way is not optimism per se but simply doing the best you can with the cards you are dealt, paying it forward whenever possible, and being grateful for everything that you’ve got in the moment. Current me may be less bright-eyed than I used to be, but I’d also like to think a little wiser.
Hmm, interesting topic to ponder. I recall someone asking my parents when I was going to college what I was going to major in and were they worried at all about me getting a job after graduating. As my mom told me afterwards, her answer was – “BabyDutch told us before she was 10 she was going to major in geography; we’ve also seen how things always seem to just work out for her, so no, we’re not worried at all, she’ll be fine.”
And shockingly, given the niche career I’ve chosen, I’ve managed to remain working with maps in some capacity the entire time. Retail maps, demographic marketing study maps, government defense maps while in the private sector, managing to get hired as a federal employee mid career. I feel I’ve come full circle with my career goals, as I just assumed as a kid I’d be working for the government – just had to wait 20 years! But I know I’m super blessed to be able to get paid for doing something I have a passion for and don’t feel it’s work. So if anything, I think 25 YO me would be stoked to know I’m still working with maps.
The fact that I managed to find my Team Life partner within the year would have definitely been my “shut the front door” disbelief moment for 25 YO me. Or that by 28, I’d be a stepmother to high schoolers, and get weird looks from the boys’ teachers on Open House night (I always got a kick out of throwing them for a loop like that), that would have NEVER entered in the realm of possibilities for me at 25. But it did, you learn to roll with it and just try to do your best. No better metaphor for life as a whole!
Did you know that our own SrCarto at the mother ship also works with maps? (As if the name isn’t a dead giveaway.)
Yup. Mapping and music seem to go hand in hand – who knew?! Lol