Did your life end up anything like you expected, or planned?
 

Just thinking about it this morning, My life is pretty good, and is similar to what I had envisioned as a teenager. I have to work a lot harder than I ever planned on, and have much more life stress than imagined, but overall, is good.
The rockstar thing did not work out so well for me, but being a self employed wrench is not the worst thing that could have happened. I have most of they toys I ever dreamed about, a decent house, and a great family.
Just some deep thoughts from fastfred this morning.

My personal life is better than I ever expected and that is due to my wonderful wife and kids.

My professional life, on the other hand is 100% disappointing and I'm working hard to improve it...

No, worked ten years in the family HVAC business expecting to inherit a part of it... got fed up with working with family, went back to school, now working as an electronic technician.

Not making as much money as if I had stayed with the family... but much happier.

And if you told me twenty or thirty years ago I would be working at a science museum I would have laughed in you face!

I never had a grand plan, so I tried a lot of things. Race car mechanic, appliance repairman, retail, & welder to get through college - those years taught me more useful stuff than college. Then an engineer at GM and then one for the Gubmint, but all the while I knew I wanted to be independent. I had always done real estate and small businesses on the side. I started what I thought was going to be a small business in 1988 while engineering for the Gubmint. Did $5 million in revenue last year and still growing. I'm happy with how things are going so far, but I never would have envisioned it.

+1
Better than I thought possible 5 years ago that is for sure!
My career took a dramatic turn a few years ago when I decided I was getting too beat up from working on the tools.
While I did take a pay cut, I also have July and August off! Not too many Refrigeration Mechanics can say that!

Mine probably turned out better. I pretty much knew I wanted to be an engineer since high school and got a mechanical engineering degree and then worked at a nuclear plant (fun), on NASA shuttle programs (even more fun), a bunch of DOD weapons programs (fun) and now have a dream job at a massive advanced research facility (lots of fun). Professionally, I can't complain. I make way more money than I ever expected to and have a dream job.

Personal life is great too. I get to play with Porsches, have a wonderful wife and great kids and live in a beautiful part of the country.

Life is good.

as a kid i never imagined my life so "vanilla".

now that i'm here, i know that "vanilla" is a good thing. can it be better? yes, but i know it could be worse.

i'll stay the course.

hey scott, i am also an electronic tech, for the FAA.

i never really had a plan. i did 4 years in the air force, 86-90, then did some auto electric work for less than a year then hired on with the FAA.
as for my job, its stress free, make good money, good hours (off at 3pm) but i am not challenged and i am bored as heck.
if i could do something else, perhaps something like a machinist that can build anything. my father in law builds race cars from the ground up, i just think that would be awesome to be able to do that. or to take a piece of metal and form it into a gas tank like JJ on that chopper show.
if not that, maybe go back and start riding bikes at a younger age. who knows. started riding in my 30's and got pretty good, considering i was not into sports as a kid.

home life is great. great wife, great kid. she tells us she is the ab-normal kid, and i believe it.

Always followed my nose into anything I became interested in. That part has worked out and produced a lifetime of stories to tell. But, I could have done better financially if I'd not been such a career vagabond.

I did spend 25 years installing doors and windows, but even that was interlaced with lots of tangent adventures. It would be too long a list for the different types of jobs I've done.

I wish I'd had as many women as I have had jobs.

But, I'm not done yet in either category.

As a teen I didn't have a plan let alone a vague notion of what my adult life would be like. When I was in high school folks asked what I was going to do when I got out. All I remember saying was, "Anything, as long as I don't have to sit behind a desk all day." Well, that's pretty much what I do. It's MY desk in MY house, so that makes it easier, but I still would prefer less time parked here staring at computer screens. I love it when clients ask me to come to THEIR offices. Yipee... a day out of the house!

The good part about not having a plan is that there's no sense of having failed to achieve certain goals. I'm sure a life-coach would scoff at the notion, but there's something to be said for being flexible and taking life as it comes. Things like parenthood, business ownership, cross-country moves, being a stay-at-home dad, were all part of my life as a result of being willing to change the life I was living at the time. All were good decisions.

i keep wondering when the other shoe is going to drop, my luck will end, and i'll end up homeless...hasn't happened yet, knock on wood...

That and I never thought about the future specifically as a kid. Not once.

I knew it was going to be interesting. Thank god I was right.

No. Most all the turns in my life have been blind turns. Very exhilarating, and very unexpected. As with Scott, if you had told me the story of my life thirty years ago, I would have laughed in your face.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1311955663.jpg
Steve

As others have mentioned, the home life with the family has been great. Great wife andf kids.

On the job front, I didn't know what I wanted to do growing up. Finally found it in construction building houses. With the melt down in home construction, I've been looking to discover what else is out there and what I can do. I have an opportunity to train and start at an aviation company here, but I will be starting all over again, making peanuts and much later in life than I planned or want. Gotta do what I gotta do though to support the family.

I thought I'd be starting pharmacy school in a few weeks....

Has my path been what I expected? No, absolutely not, but then I didn't really have a "plan". I don't spend a lot of time focusing on the future or trying to plan it out. The only future that I think about is financial.

I always figured I'd go to college, get a job, family, etc.... Pretty much follow the "normal" path.

Well, I went to college, but didn't really have any idea what I wanted to do or what was available for me to do so I was aimlessly wandering through with no motivation. I quit college because I didn't have the motivation to put in the work. That's when the adventure started. A series of what for me was odd occurrences led me to where I am now. I worked at a retail auto parts store for a couple of years until I became a manager. I quickly realized that the retail biz was no good for me. I then met a woman and moved from FL to TX 2 months later because this is where she lived. She knew someone that was a manager at a night club that got me into the bar business. I bartended at topless bars for about 5 years. I realized that I didn't want to make a career of bartending or topless bars and started looking for my calling. I ended up getting into IT on a rocket ride. I went from my first IT job at $10/hr to $100k/yr in about a year. Then 2001 happened. I got laid off and the money went away. I started over and have worked myself up to where I'm doing well. I'm happy and still with the same woman that caused me to move to Texas after almost 17 years.

Everytime something has happened that has seemed at the time like a bit of bad luck, I've always been able to look back and realize that it led me to someplace better than I'd been before.

Nope, not at all like I'd have expected, but I think much better.

Extremely well put.

Gawd, is this the truth. Every major disappointment in my life has turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. Now I don't even get upset about such stuff anymore, as I absolutely know it will eventually and somehow lead me to a better place.

so that means YOU are over the insurance snafu?..................NOT!

in a mill-yon years i would not have predicted lifes turns. everyday the train jumps the tracks.

Thanks, Steve. It has been said that God's greatest gift to us is our inability to see the future. I agree with this. "The Circle Game" by Joni Mitchell is one of my generation's most beloved songs. And....my generation produced a mountain of beloved songs.

Ah hell, that's NOTHING. The first thing I thought when I felt that impact was, "I'm getting a Euro turbo bumper now." No disappointment at all. It will all work out. Now, if I can DIY it and pocket some of the money, I'll get two new front tires out of it too.

yeah pretty much, A divorce from my first wife 30 years ago and having some problems with drinking that I solved 30 years ago, (coincidence?) were a bit of a speed bump, but it pretty much turned out to my liking. I'm good with it. But I, like others, never really had a plan.

i think we can arrange that.

Well, I'm retired and still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. I didn't feel I had the luxury of a grand plan, though it would have been nice. I had to always roust about for what would feed & house me at the time after leaving my parents' house at 18. Had to put myself through university and took whatever job I could to pay the bills. I ended up in education, which was an odd situation since I was one of those students teachers drew staws to see who would be the unlucky one to get me in class. However that may have ultimately contributed to the success I had in the classroom. Over time I had the chance to do lots of different, challenging, & fun things and ended up spending almost half my career outside the classroom. So no, my life ended anything like I probably would have expected but I did a lot of fun things and I'm still having fun.

The 17-year old me would think my life is fking amazing, but the 40-year old me doesn't exactly feel the same way.

It wouldn't have worked anyway. Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. God finds our plan-making very amusing.

Early 20's, 25 addresses in two years.
Twenty years later, two addresses in 25 years.
A good mate has made life pretty easy for me.
Jim

It's lasted much longer than I expected, and I never imagined I'd be so blessed.
All in all my life turned out much better than I expected, or anyone else who knew me expected it to.

I used to say this all of the time. My wife was always perplexed. Several years back, she told me that it used to baffle her when something would happen and it wouldn't bother me. I always told her "it'll work out", and it always did. She said she found that she had started to think the same way and realized that it did always work out.

Well, it doesn't always happen by itself, but with some effort, it does tend to work out. It's not really in my nature to sit back and let a crisis have its way with me. I'm not super successful or smart, but I do have some problem-solving skills and half the battle is just admitting the problem and deciding to take action. Cultural differences with my wife make this very apparent to me. She, like so many other Chinese, is very smart, but can never admit fault or recognize a problem. So she has a hard time taking that first step toward solving it.

Is this what I expected or planned?

Heck if I know. I don't really remember expecting or planning anything in my younger days.

This is called, "I don't give a rat's ass."

And I don't.

Started out good as expected and still is but have a feeling its going to end very badly!

I think it all comes down to being happy where you are in life!

You have to be happy with your station in life, if you can't find anything good in your life and think, if only I had this I'd be happy, then you're screwed. The more you strive for to, make yourself happy and content, will still not change your outlook and it certainly will seem in the total crapper if you move backwards.

So there is good in every situation, life moves on, don't let it leave you behind with regret and with - but if only I had ..........

I have been accused of apathy my whole life. I prefer to think of it as having a good perspective.

I think I adapt and "monkey roll" with whatever life has thrown at me. Good health (both mental and physical) has always been a higher priority than wealth. In that regard, I'm very rich. And i still have my good looks, so I've got that goin' for me...

Yep!

In my case it was a combination of definitive planning and recognizing and taking advantage of opportunities as they came along.

As a child and teenager, I had a long list of things I wanted to do. These have been added to, but seldom subtracted from. They ranged from books to read, subjects to study, tasks to do, activities to try, goals to reach.

My plans covered all aspects of life's diverse facets. Personal attributes to develop, experiences to gain, relationships to have, etc.

My ability to recognize opportunities and exploit the possibilities developed from the results of following my plan.

I have suffered the usual life events, friends and relatives dying, relationships that did not work out, problems with jobs, etc. I knew from the beginning that I did not have total control of all aspects of my world. I am good with that as it leads to more challenges.



But, all in all, I have only one regret. I wish I had more time.