Did You Actually Plan This?

I’m going to make a prediction about you: you didn’t plan this.

Whatever you are doing right now, wherever you are sitting, whatever title is on your business card, I am willing to bet it was not the original plan. You had a plan, of course. We all did. Beautiful plans. Detailed plans. Plans that made perfect sense when we were younger, confident, undercaffeinated, and wildly unaware of how strange adult life can become.

Then life looked at those plans and said, “That’s adorable. Now watch this.”

West Virginia Forever. Or So I Thought.

Here is what my plan looked like when I graduated from Purdue Veterinary School in 2001: I was going to be a mixed animal veterinarian in West Virginia for my entire life. That was it. Simple. Clean. Done.

I loved West Virginia. It was home. Mountains everywhere. Family close. People I understood. I figured I would treat dogs and cats, deliver calves, work with farmers, maybe buy into a practice someday, and stay put. That was literally the whole plan.

Fast forward to today, and I am in Iowa. Iowa. I am running hospital operations at Iowa State’s teaching hospital. West Virginia is about 800 miles away, and I have not practiced clinical medicine in years. So, you know, just a tiny adjustment to the original itinerary.

In between, I started a mixed-animal veterinary practice. Brown Veterinary Service had a brick-and-mortar small animal clinic, and I still did ambulatory large animal work. I ran an e-commerce business on the side because apparently one career was not enough chaos. I became a teacher, helped build an accredited veterinary nursing program, ended up directing veterinary nursing programs at Purdue, and now I am here in the cornfields helping lead a teaching hospital.

None of that was in the plan. Not one bit of it.

Your Turn to Laugh

Which brings me to you. Think back to when you graduated. What was your plan? Where did you think you would be by now? Are you laughing yet?

I’m guessing the answer is somewhere between “well, sort of close” and “not even the same solar system.” And if you are honest, where you ended up is probably more interesting than what you planned.

That is the strange thing about career planning. We treat it like following a recipe. Do Step A, then Step B, add enough ambition, sprinkle in a few credentials, and eventually you arrive at Success.

But careers are rarely that neat. Careers are more like throwing ingredients into a pot, hoping it does not explode, and then realizing the explosion may have been the most important part of the recipe. Sometimes the mess becomes the meal.

When Disasters Turn Into Wins

Think about the job you did not get. The one you thought you were perfect for. The one you could already picture yourself doing. The one where they picked someone else and you went home replaying the whole process in your head.

Where would you be right now if you had gotten it?

That question is not always fun, but it is usually useful. Some of the best moments in a career show up wearing terrible costumes. A job loss pushes you toward work you never would have tried. A failed project teaches you what you are actually good at. A bad boss gives you the final nudge to leave. A rejection saves you from a room you were never meant to be in.

At the time, those moments feel awful. They feel unfair, embarrassing, disruptive, and inconvenient. But later, when enough distance has passed, you start to see the strange little thread running through them. You did not get what you wanted, and somehow, that may have been the gift.

We spend so much time trying to avoid mistakes, detours, and career bruises. But those are usually the parts of the story people actually want to hear. Nobody gathers around to listen to someone explain how every step of their five-year plan worked perfectly.

Also, if everything had gone exactly according to your original plan, you would still be living inside the imagination of 22-year-old you. And let’s be honest. Twenty-two-year-old you was probably making some questionable calls.

I say that with affection. Mine certainly was.

The Network You Didn’t Know You Were Building

Here is another funny thing: how did you actually get your current job? Was it your flawless resume, perfect strategy, and color-coded career plan?

Maybe. But for a lot of us, it was messier than that. Someone remembered you from a conference. A former colleague mentioned your name. A person you helped three years ago thought of you when an opportunity opened. Someone had watched you work, noticed how you treated people, and trusted your name enough to say it in a room you were not in.

All those years you were just trying to do good work, keep your promises, and not embarrass yourself? You were building something more valuable than a resume.

You were building trust.

And the best part is that you probably were not doing it as some grand strategy. You were just showing up. Being decent. Doing the work. Helping when you could. Following through when it mattered.

Turns out that may be the real strategy.

Maybe Someone’s Steering

When you look back at your career, with all the unexpected turns, closed doors, random introductions, strange opportunities, and inconvenient disruptions, does it feel completely random? Or does it feel like maybe something was steering?

I do not say that lightly. I know careers can be hard. I know some seasons are confusing, painful, and exhausting. I also know that when we look backward, the events that felt random at the time often begin to make more sense.

That job loss led to a better opportunity. That unwanted move introduced you to someone who changed your life. That project you got stuck with became your specialty. That season you would never choose to repeat taught you something you still use today.

Call it God. Call it providence. Call it luck, grace, timing, or the strange comedy of the universe. Use whatever language fits your life. But maybe our plans are not the final word. Maybe there is a better script unfolding in ways we cannot see when we are standing in the middle of it.

How to Roll With It

Here is what I have figured out after planning to spend my entire life in West Virginia and somehow ending up in Iowa: make your plans. Have goals. Dream big. Work hard. Be intentional.

Just do not cling so tightly to the plan that you miss the opportunity standing beside it. Because the best parts of your career may not look anything like what you expected.

A few things have helped me along the way.

Look back at your “disasters” and name three career moments that felt like failures at the time. I would bet at least one of them looks different now. Maybe all three do.

Stop treating every relationship like a transaction. Just help people. Be decent. Do good work. The most effective networking strategy is becoming someone people are glad to work with again.

Say yes to a few strange opportunities. Not all of them, of course. Some strange opportunities are just bad ideas wearing a hat. But the things that do not fit your original plan are often the things that stretch you into the next version of yourself.

And when things go sideways, get curious before you get bitter. Instead of only asking, “Why is this happening to me?” try asking, “Where might this be taking me?”

That question has changed a lot for me.

Brown Veterinary Service did not fit the plan. Teaching did not fit the plan. Purdue administration did not fit the plan. Iowa did not fit the plan.

And yet, here we are.