Well… That Didn’t Go as Planned

 

A memoir written entirely by missed exits, emotional support iced coffee, and “learning experiences.”

You ever look back on your life and realize it’s basically just one long chain of:
“Okay, THIS time I’ve got it figured out…”
followed immediately by chaos, confusion, and a completely unnecessary character-building exercise?

Because honestly?
Some people have vision boards.
Some of us have survival stories that started with, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

The older I get, the more I realize adulthood is just aggressively improvising while pretending you meant to do that the whole time.

You planned a peaceful weekend.
Life sent:

• a flat tire,
• an emotional breakdown,
• three ignored texts suddenly answered at once,
• and a random urge to reorganize your entire kitchen at 11:47 PM.

Cool. Love that for us.

And can we talk about how exhausting it is being optimistic?
Like somehow we STILL wake up every morning thinking:
“Maybe today will be calm.”

Meanwhile life is in the corner like:
“LOL. Anyway…”

At this point, my coping mechanism is humor, snacks, and lowering expectations just enough to stay emotionally hydrated.

Because here’s the thing nobody tells you:
Almost nobody’s life went according to plan.

The people who look like they have it all together?
Half of them are one inconvenience away from staring at a wall in silence for 45 minutes.

The rest of us are just out here adapting.
Badly. But adapting.

And honestly?
There’s something weirdly freeing about admitting it.

Not every failed plan means you failed.
Sometimes it just means life hit the shuffle button while you were trying to color-code your future.

Maybe the relationship ending wasn’t the tragedy.
Maybe staying would’ve been.

Maybe the job falling apart redirected you somewhere healthier.
Maybe the delay saved you from forcing something that was never aligned to begin with.

Or maybe…
it was just a complete dumpster fire with no deeper meaning whatsoever.

That’s also possible.

Not everything is a spiritual lesson, Susan.
Sometimes your GPS reroutes because you’re emotionally unstable and missed the exit.

But if we’re being fair, some of the best parts of life come from the unplanned moments:

• the people you never expected to meet,
• the opportunities that showed up disguised as inconvenience,
• the strength you discovered after plans collapsed,
• and the ability to laugh at things that once would’ve destroyed you.

Growth is realizing:
“I survived things I thought would break me… and now I joke about them with iced coffee in hand.”

That’s evolution, baby.

So if your life currently feels like a flaming beach umbrella blowing into the ocean while you stand there with wild hair and thousand-yard stare energy…

Congratulations.
You’re participating in the human experience.

And honestly?
“Well, that didn’t go as planned” might actually be the unofficial slogan of adulthood.

Right next to:

• “I need to lie down.”
• “Why is this sticky?”
• and “I literally just paid bills yesterday.”