I’m sure nearly everyone knows someone who has a Plan; a nicely laid out itinerary for the rest of their lives that they will follow with the utmost care to the Perfect Life where they will live happily ever after.

I used to have a Plan too. I got mine from reading too many Cosmopolitan magazines, but this was my Plan:

  1. Go to university and get a degree in something awesome that would give me the opportunity and means to be rich.
  2. Get a high-paying job directly out of school and start saving for the Perfect House.
  3. Meet the Perfect Man whose Plan complements my Plan.
  4. Have my picture taken for Cosmopolitan magazine as one of the most influential people under 30 while looking very poised, perfect and totally hot.

This is what actually happened:

  1. Went to university and got a English Literature degree.
  2. Worked at a series of uninspiring jobs for a series of uninspiring people for peanuts.
  3. Seriously dated men (and married one) who were totally wrong for me.
  4. Stopped reading Cosmopolitan magazine ages ago and have certainly never had my picture in it.

I am coming to realize (with the help of a few people who regularly beat this into my head) that my worth as  a person shouldn’t be tied up with accomplishments. That’s not to say I shouldn’t be proud of the things I do well or give myself a pat on the back when I’ve earned it, but that the sum of who I am is not how much I make or what I do to make it.

I’m 32 and I’m only now coming to see this – and I still have a long way to go before I believe it enough to live it.

I have often felt that not fulfilling the Plan made me inherently unlovable – something that was reinforced by the daily behaviour of one of my ex’s. The message to me seemed to be: “Get a good paying job, work at it constantly, make lots of money and I will adore/respect/love you.”

I tried that. I worried constantly about how to get the Right Job and spent hours applying for positions I wasn’t all that interested in. I wanted to be the person whose Plan was the right kind of plan. I desperately wanted the approval of my ex, my friends, my parents and the perfect strangers I was sure to meet at cocktail parties.

In my daydreams, a well-dressed woman at a cocktail party would say “What do you do?” and I would say (while smoothing an imaginary wrinkle from my very hot designer Little Black Dress) “Oh, I am the editor of all those books on the New York Times best-seller list. Tom Clancy and I are actually having lunch tomorrow.” And she’d laugh; a rich and approving laugh, and I’d be IN.

I would be one of those women in Cosmo who was making $80k a year at the age of 25 and I would do it with style and grace. I would tell the interviewer “This really just started as a hobby and the next thing you know I’m getting all these crazy offers! I’m still surprised by my own success!.”

I’ve got quite the imagination, but I haven’t entirely neglected the Plan I originally made. My English Literature degree has not been the ticket to the big time. To be truthful though; I knew that when I signed on, but I figured since I was good at reading I might as well get credit for it . I have not had many jobs that I generally liked going to and I left the last one about two weeks ago because it was making me insane in a bad way.

I still don’t read Cosmopolitan, because I find it hard to believe that there are 50 new ways to please your man in bed every single month as their magazine seems to claim on every cover I can remember.

I have, however, met the Perfect Man. It took a few duds (and boy could I tell you stories!), but I finally met him and his Plan is to be happy. I like his Plan a lot and have begun to think I ought to adopt it.

So, I don’t have the perfect career where I make loads of money and my sweetheart and I live in a rented apartment below one of the most spoiled three year-olds I’ve ever met and I have yet to attend a cocktail party in a designer dress or otherwise…but who cares?

I have a few very good friends who don’t care what I do for a living or how much I make so long as I am happy, I have a fiancee who is absolutely perfect for me and the further I get from the Plan and all it’s attendant stupidities, the happier I am.

It’s cliched, but it really is the grit that seeps into the oyster shell that makes the pearl.