I had plans for my life. I always do. In college I majored in my fallback plan. Then after college my life was my fallback plan for my initial fallback plan. But I never planned for this. I never planned for what my life is now. It is thousands of miles from what I thought my life would be.

In high school my plan was to be a professional ballerina for a few years and then move on to triple threat status on Broadway. As I grew or didn’t really, I realized my lack of height and curvy body would not be welcome at American Ballet Theater. I scrapped that and decided Broadway was it and I’d have a newspaper column on the side. Cue college where I majored in journalism and communications. While in college the internet and blogs started to take over and print journalism slowly started its descent. Finding a job that would keep a roof over my New York head as a journalist didn’t happen. Instead I fell into a job in the one communications area I did not take classes in. Public relations. I tried to make it happen. I did make some good journalist contacts. I did try to turn some of those connections into jobs but it didn’t work.

I finally decided that my initial plan of living in New York was no longer working after over a decade. After a failed attempt at a job in Los Angeles I moved back to Nashville with no plans and not much interest in staying for long. I thought it could be my incubation period. Where I worked on building a new life and then went off elsewhere to live it. Because there was no way in hell I was going to stay. I used to tell my friends that if I ever said I wanted to move back to Nashville they should shoot me.

But what do you know, I really love it. My life is so much better than it was. I am not living out what I thought my dream was but dreams aren’t always what they seem to be when your eyes are closed. Once my eyes were finally opened I could clearly see a new path in front of me. I didn’t plan it but it’s lovely.