Looking Back On Looking Forward

[poliphilo]

Mike was asking me whether I spent a lot of time planning a future when I was his age and I thought about it and said, "No, not really."

I remember- thirty years ago- discussing career plans with the smoothie in the next door parish and being shocked to discover he had his life all mapped out ahead of him. He reckoned he wasn't sufficiently well connected to get a bishopric so he was going to settle for an archdeaconry- and in order to get his archdeaconry he meant to make himself visible in all the appropriate places and get into the good graces of all the right people. "How Godless," I thought (because I was always a prig) and also, "How silly!"

Comments

Re: I wish I was back home in Derry.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wanted to be a great poet. I enjoyed writing the poems but the wanting to be great made me unhappy.

Re: I wish I was back home in Derry.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Also a lot of bad poets.

[calizen.livejournal.com]

A lot of the young people who want to "make it" have taken to heart the admonishments to plan out your life 5 years, 10 years, and 20 years from now. Ai, for me, at that time it was a matter of surviving the next MONTH and I just had to be content that the next YEAR would take care of itself. My son, who is a 20-year planner just looks at me and shakes his head.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

But you survived. You're still here.

If I'd planned an ecclesiastical career it would have been a complete waste of time because- well- things happened and I found myself on a very different path.

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

I think about my career, too. However, I think in terms of that I need to put myself out there to make social connections (this is reality). However, I am still hopelessly romantically tied to the notion that there is a divinity that is going to place me in front of the people I need to meet and connect with in order to do the work that I am supposed to do. People who think like your "smoothie" kind of creep me out.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I believe in that "divinity" too.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

The best careers advice I was ever given (from a comic book no less) was always choose the interesting path. Seems to have stood me in good stead so far.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Excellent advice.