How did you get here?

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How did you come to be where you are in life right this very moment? Was it luck? If so, was it good luck or bad luck? Was it a choice (good or bad)? Is this where you want to be, where you wanted to be? Did you set a goal, make a plan, to go after certain things or to do or see certain things, and that's how you're where you are now? Did you pursue a career in something you really like and it's led you here? Did you choose this path or did it choose you? Was it all coincidence or cause and effect?

How did YOU get here?

-- Anonymous, October 07, 2000

Answers

You know Paul, that to properly answer those many questions would require a novel out of most of us. How about. Partially, both, yes, both, *no*, yes, yes, both, both and finally, I've stopped planning 6 months in advance because life can fluctuate and change wildly.

-- Anonymous, October 08, 2000

All of the above.

-- Anonymous, October 08, 2000

I think most of us will say it's a combination of all of the above. I wasn't looking for novels. :-)

I can look back and see that a certain decision I made in high school and then another one two years later made very positive alterations to the course of my life. Those involved goal-setting and future-planning, although short-term. After college, there was a certain amount of "go-with-the-flow" - I didn't know where I wanted to be or where I wanted to go. Then Luck stepped in and I was in the right place at the right time to get the job that would eventually lead to my career. The next thing I did was choose a career path and to pursue some specific goals around that, and I've been happy with that path and where I am now. Luck and drifting teamed up in my personal life and I met, fell in love with and married my wife - looking back, I could almost swear that Fate had something to do with it, although I am generally not inclined to believe in Fate or Destiny.

-- Anonymous, October 08, 2000


I never made plans or anything. I feel like I've always been on the brink of a much worse fate, and that God or someone has always snatched me away in the nick of time.

THERE. I SAID IT, OKAY?

Y'all don't laugh at my hokey belief. Or just laugh quietly, all right?

-- Anonymous, October 09, 2000


I blame bad things that happened on bad choices I made, and good things on luck or The Force. ;)

When I make goals, I usually achieve them, but I'm in a place where I have an inability to care about anything enough to make new Goals to go after. PArtially that is because I am in serious survival mode--trying to take care of food and shelter and employment and so on. Lots of upheavals that aren't base don anything I'm doing or not doing. I.e., our landlord, from whom we are renting a nice big house, is terminally ill and has decided to sell off his properties before he dies, and rather than extending our lease by 6 months or a year, he prefers that we go month to month so that if a buyer appears, the transfer of ownership will not involve waiting for a lease to be up. So we're scrambling to find housing in a tough market and to find a place that is in a safer part of town, and struggling to pay extra $$ for things because we've lost two roommates and can't get another to share expenses while our lease only runs month-to-month...it's tight. There's only so much ramen you can eat to save a penny. :)

I pursued a career wholeheartedly until it turned out to be vastly unlike what I'd hoped (advertising, & I posted elsewhere about that on this forum).

I think everything has been cause and effect more or less. My mom likes to say that coincidence is when God prefers to be Anonymous. (To which I replied, "What?! God writes all the smutty books in the bookstore?!" She didn't find that funny. Besides, it's not just God, it's also Anne Rice and some sixty-year-old cigar-smoking grandpa in Nebraska writing all the smutty books in the bookstore, DUH.) Despite my irreverent response, I like to think that she's got a point there. :)

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2000



No matter how hard I tried to screw it up I came out ahead. I just rolled with the punches. And most of those punches were self inflicted. I like to think the Lord was watching over me and he has something he wants me to do before I go. I haven't a clue. If you knew me you'ld say my life was charmed. Nothing terrible has ever happened to me except the stupid things I've done to myself. I have never planned anything. Never. I've been rode hard and put away wet but I've never been beat up too bad. After 30 years of being stupid with certain substances and liquids I am in one piece and except for a bad memory I'm pretty together. Most everyone else that rode my way is either gone or not in a very good state of mind. Lord knows why I was spared. I guess when the time comes He'll let me know. In the mean time I'm pretty happy to be here thankyou very much. james

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2000

I feel the exact same way. I feel like all the choices I make should have, at this point, led me into a life as a homeless lady living on the streets and eating rats. But somehow everything gets fixed up at the last minute and I'm still okay. And yet I always feel one step away from disaster.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Paul, are you some "twenty something" person, asking the question? Did you just suddenly take an exit off your local expressway, and find yourself in a culture which seemed so foreign? James, I loved your post, In which you said "No matter how hard I screwed up, I came out ahead". The part about "rode hard, and put up wet", has strangely enough been, part of my Families phrases for many years. Hell, we never ever owned any horses,(other than Mules), but we knew what it meant. How did we wind up here? It took an imagination to span the Web, in search for truth. Some, still seek for truth. I wish Good Luck, to those who pursue.

-- Anonymous, October 12, 2000

Oh, Church Fan, you just made me laugh harder than I have all week! Twenty-something? Nope, next month I will be 35.

An "exit off my local expressway"? A "culture which seemed so foreign"? Nothing could be farther from reality. Sorry to disappoint you, and maybe I phrased my question ineffectively, but I just wanted to know how people thought they got where they are today.

-- Anonymous, October 13, 2000


35! THIRTYFIVE!!! I'd just like to "remember" 35. james

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2000


It's all in your head, James. You're as old as you want to be. (Easy for someone younger than you to say, huh? :-)

-- Anonymous, October 16, 2000

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