All About Trey

Life Plan 1.2 (Circa 1986)

Let's see, I was a youngster (aka sophmore) at the Naval Academy. I had survived plebe year, barely. I was young, and naive, but I had a plan.

I would graduate from the Naval Academy and become a NFO (Naval Flight Officer). This was just after Top Gun, so being a Naval Aviator was the rage. I had bad vision (this was pre-Lasik) so I couldn't be a pilot, but an NFO on a P-3 (where the NFO is the commander of the plane) sounded good. I would do my 2 years of flight school, then five years in the Navy (my minimum obligation). If I liked it, I would stay in and go for 20. If I didn't, I would get out and then I would move to Amsterdam or some place in Europe. I was getting my degree in Naval Architecture and they just don't build a lot of ships here in the US. So I would live abroad (flashbacks to my childhood) for a couple of years to get some good experience, and then when I was ready to "slow down" a bit, I would come back to the United States and do ship design and stuff for the Navy. A nice government job where I would work 8 hours and leverage my time already in the Navy towards a nice retirement package.

There you go. I had it all mapped out. Not a bad plan for a 20 year old I guess.

Ah, but let's take a deeper look. What does this life plan focus on? Work, work, and more work. Even at this early age, I'd started to define myself by my job. Do you see any reference to falling in love, getting married, or having children? No, of course not. Deep down, way deep down I knew that wasn't going to happen for me. It would be years before the self-acknowledgement of my sexual orientation, but back then, I just knew that my future didn't involve the usual goals and milestones that my friends would have. So that part of my life was just skipped in the plan.

I've had several life plans in the past 20 years or so. Most, if not all of them, followed this same pattern. And then consistently I've felt unhappy, incomplete, unfulfilled. Having a life plan that doesn't include anything else other than work is not good.

Do I even need a life plan anymore? What about just experiencing life and living one day at a time? I hear/read about people who LIVE their lives. While it just seems like I plan mine. And obviously not very well.

I told you there was some deep sh!t stirred up when I was sick and stuck at home for three days.

posted by Trey @ 8:39 PM