Unseen Hours: Episode 14 - Plans Up in Flames

Sometimes you have to burn the plan to find the purpose. This episode dives into letting go of control, trusting improvisation, and allowing life to redraw the lines when your old vision stops fitting your growth.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

For this, I'm uh gonna talk about well, you know, previously I talked about structures and plans, and it's important to have those. But also, sometimes staying in those plans and structures can be a detriment. So you need to learn when to let things go. Um if you don't let things go and try something different, it'll put you in a worse situation. And sometimes you're in a situation where you have no choice but to let it go, and you gotta do whatever you have to do to try to um keep yourself going and basically move towards m stabilizing rather than move towards your goal. Uh perfect example, you know, I had a good supervisor job in California in manufacturing, and I was uh living with my wife and you know, we were pretty much good. But then there was an offer in Maryland for a government job that paid significantly more. So I was like, no brainer, let's do it. Then we get together our own spot, you know, and build just a new life together. Let's do it. So I did it. And then, you know, with these jobs, they require clearances, and these clearances require investigations that can take somewhere between six months to up to a year and a half. So depending on what kind of clearance you're going for, it may take a while or it may not take that long at all. I was told it was going to be for a secret clearance, but when I got there, I was told it's gonna be for top secret. For me, that should have been a red flag, and I should have been like, okay, never mind, I'm good. But I was under the impression and believed that they would actually uh keep um giving me work, even if it's not cleared work, until it was done. Well, lo and behold, six months later, um, I got let go because my investigation was gonna take too long. Then in reality, it was never gonna finish that quickly. Second that they put me in for top secret, I shouldn't knew. Well, it's gonna take like a year and a half. They're not gonna wait that long for me to get my clearance. And it ended up happening that way. They didn't wait that long. Um, and you know, the plan was to go there, make more money, build our life there, and eventually buy a house there and you know, settle down or whatever. Well, once they let me go, obviously that uh paycheck wasn't there anymore. So it was like uh scramble mode at that point. The plan that I had to be able to take care of her and make more money so we could have a better life on our own, it wasn't happening. Um so then at that point I had to redo everything I was thinking and basically scrap that plan because now that plan's not happening, and finding a job where we lived at that point in time that paid that much, if it wasn't government, it wasn't gonna happen. And clearly at that point, well even though I was applying, no uh government uh companies were uh taking my application and uh considering me. So, you know, I scrambled and I did whatever I had to do. I scrapped that plan, I was like, okay, well, at this point on, I'm no longer doing government work because I'm not gonna sit there and wait for a clearance that may not ever come to fruition. And uh at that point in time I had also started school while I was working at that job because uh one of the employees was like, why don't you go out to school? Why don't you finish? And I was like, Well, you know, you're right. And plus I'd be doing that to take care of my wife, so fuck it, let's do it. And um, so at that point in time, they let me go. I was still going to school. Um, and then at that point in time I was like, well, I need to find a job, regardless of where it's at. So that's when I went retail and went to Walgreens. Yeah, I think I was gonna be at Walgreens forever, but at least it was gonna give me a steady paycheck. So, you know, I went for it. And then um I ended up working at Walgreens for almost two years, basically, at that point in time. And working at Walgreens helped a lot because in the end, was I able to take care of her? Yes, we did work together to basically get whatever we need and do whatever we need to do. But in the end, I was able to get us a new car, and I was able to get us a new house. Um, I was able to get us to move closer to the city. Like, all the things that I wanted for us ended up happening. But it didn't happen the way that I thought it would. It happened completely different than what I expected. So, um, even though that happened, you know, it's the same thing. Uh you have that structure, you have that plan, and then if a challenge happens, you get thrown off, and then basically what I had to do was push off my plans for what I wanted to do for us and focus on the now and take care of the now and stabilize now. And then once I was able to stabilize by working at Walgreens, then I was able to move forward with the plans that I initially had and continue forward. So the plan still happened, it just didn't happen the way I wanted to, and you know, it was after I had to kind of scrap the plan and focus on something different. So, um, and then don't be afraid to do whatever you have to do to get yourself stable. If your plan falls through, that's fine. Just adjust and adapt to it, and then work your way back to the plan in the end. I'm just cast on. This is unseen hours.