I get a lot of questions about “what’s the plan?”
I don’t know. I really don’t know.
Be patient. Go slow. Figure stuff out.
The reality is I’m not any different now than I was last year or three or five years ago. At least not in my ability to do things.
I’m more jaded. I think there are major concerns with how I currently view political interactions at work (I don’t like them and am not interested in playing games—but this has always been true.)
I’ve got skills outside of what I’ve recently done to make money.
And I’ve come to the realization that the previous job should never be the main reliant on which I make my next choice.
For now, I’m studying elk hunting and doing everything in my power to be successful hunting elk this season.
If I am successful, I hope I’ll realize I was most likely lucky and continue to work hard at being more successful in coming years.
If I’m not, I expect to conclude I didn’t know enough or work hard enough, and develop a plan to be successful next year.
I’m the meantime, I’m documenting my effort and progress toward that end. And that’s a challenge. It’s easy to learn along the way. It’s really hard to go slowly enough to retain things well enough to both document and teach.
And in most cases learning happens slowly enough that it’s not an interesting thing to document.
So when people ask me “what’s the plan?” Or worse, ask my wife, I get a little triggered. The simple fact is “the plan is to learn something deeply. Take lessons from that I expect to last more than a lifetime. And if it doesn’t make sense to you, I don’t feel like I need to explain myself further.”