free form destiny

Someone asked me where I wanted to be (professionally) in 5 years today.  My honest response was, "that is a great question."  I have no freaking clue where I want to be five years from now- I barely know where I want to be tomorrow!  Thinking back five years ago, did I think I would be sitting here with my markting degree in a technology company doing B2B marketing? NOPE.  Did I think I would be living where I live, with who I live with?  NOPE.  Did I think that any piece of my life would be the way it is?  NOPE.  I think you get the point. 


But it's not like I didn't have a plan.  In fact, I had a very detailed, structured five year plan.  Everything from career, to continued education, to hobbies, to personal relationships was mapped out, color coded, I'm pretty sure I even had a couple of flow charts kicking around.  Seriously!  But somewhere along those five years, life happened.  And here I am floating around, my main concern being staying afloat, I haven't even begun to think about where I want to go let alone how I am going to get there.  This is a problem in my life.  Or maybe it's not.


After establishing that I have no freaking clue where I want to take my professional career, I got some great advice from two of my mentors- you know you have good mentors when two of them have the same advice.  "Think about what position you want to be in five years from now, figure out what skills that would take, and keep a list of both skills that you have that fall in line with the position requirements as well as those that you need to acquire before you have the full gamete.  Work on getting experiences that build the skills you are missing and there in lies your plan."


Brilliant advice if you don't know how to get where you are going: start at the end and work backwards.  However, it doesn't really help if you have no clue where you want to be in five years.  The point being, you can plan, execute, review, and repeat all day in order to meet your goals, but figuring out what goals to set has to come from somewhere.  I would refer back to my head vs. heart post.  They both have their appropriate functions: our brain can easily figure out how to get where we are going, but our heart has to select where that destination is.  And until it decides where you want to go, it's ok to float, just make sure you enjoy the ride.