A close friend of mine recently flew the coop and went to South America. When I asked her where she was planning on staying when her flight landed her response made me break out into a sweat. "I don't know, Ill find somewhere" she said in her ever so chilled manner. Ummmm WHAT! You're arriving at a foreign country that doesn't speak English at 6am after a 23 hour flight and you don't have anywhere to stay!? But its just her. She's just so chill. I mean, I know she's going to be ok. She always is. And thats the thing, even if you don't have somewhere to stay, you're always going to be ok.
Ive had a grand plan since I was 15 years old. The age where the teachers tell you that you need to decide what you're doing for the rest of your life. We were handed books the size of a phone directory with every possible career summarised into what qualities you should have, what classes in final year you needed to take, what degree was needed and the general specifications of the job. Like any 15 year old girl from an all girls school my mind was otherwise occupied with the pimple between my eyes, the boy from that school and why Kate wasn't talking to Rachel even though Sophie had said blah blah blah. In another 3am not sleeping moment I grabbed my highlighter and went to town on the book. All of a sudden getting into Medicine looked pretty grim. Physics and Chemistry?! Fuck that! Ok, ok, ok. Lower the standards. I like people. And media. Oh PR looks fun. So it was set....
Age 17: Graduate from school with good grades try not to flunk exams.
Age 18: Get accepted into PR and Journalism at Uni
Age 21: Graduate Uni get amazing post-grad job in creative fun PR agency, be totally inspired and amazed at life.
Age 22: Get promoted. Have apartment in Subiaco with small sausage dog called Wilbur.
Age 23: Quit job. Go travelling. Move to London.
Age 23-25: Have amazing high paying job in London and find a man who looks like Hugh Grant
So as far as plans go, not completely unobtainable. In fact, I did do some of that. But around the 22 mark was when shit didn't go to plan. Most people I know that are 22 either don't have plans or if they do they aren't particularly stressed when a spanner gets hurled with great force into the works.
My spanner comes in the very ugly form of my health. Or, more accurately, my sickness. Its crappy. Its uninspiring. Its boring to have to repeat to people why Im not living in London still. But I need to realise that its something thats not going to change. So Im going to deal with the fucking fucked up spanner. And make the most of being in this beautiful city surrounded by awesome people.
Recently it was pointed out to me that control is just a perception of your own reality. In other words whether you feel like you have control over something or not doesn't matter because really no one can have 100% control over every single thing anyway. So you may as well just go with the flow and enjoy what you've got.
