How the F*** Did I End Up Here?
Do you ever
find yourself asking that question?
You might
have gone into things with a certain plan—a plan for your day, a plan for your
career, heck, even a plan for your life—but you end up in a totally different
place than you expected!
This
weekend, I visited my brother in Vancouver, and we spent both Saturday and
Sunday hiking around some absolutely spectacular lakes and rivers.
(Goofy guy marring the view of the lake
is aforementioned brother)
On Sunday,
he found a trail along the lakeshore, which was supposed to take us to a
beautiful isolated spot overlooking the lake.
But less
than a quarter of the way along the trail, heavy rains had washed out the path,
so we had to take a detour.
Simple
enough? Absolutely not! What should have been a 60-second trek around a rock
(down a path we didn’t see) ended up being a 30-minute detour deep into the
forest and as lost as one could get while still being within sight of their
destination.
We went up and
down some pretty insane slopes, to where we were literally sliding on our butts
to keep our footing on muddy ground. Finally, after deciding we were going the
wrong way, we pulled out our map and hiked in the general direction of “back on
track”.
The fact that you’re reading this means we survived and got back to where we wanted to go.
But that got
me thinking about my own life…
I never set
out to be an author. I didn’t dream about it as a kid, a teenager, or a young
man.
I wrote
here and there because I enjoyed it, but it was never my dream job.
Like on our
misguided hike, I ENDED UP HERE because of some detours and deviations along
the way:
During
a time of financial hardships in 2010, I got into doing online surveys to make
some extra cash.After
moving cities with no job in 2011, I searched for online work and signed up for
e-newsletters.While
teaching English, I randomly clicked on a Spam email (from one of those
newsletters I’d signed up for) that offered to produce web content and articles
for a website. I had no site that needed articles, but figured I could write
articles well enough.After
writing articles for 2 years, I was earning enough to do it full-time, and I could
move my family to a new city in 2012. Somewhere
along the way, I decided I was one day going to write a book. But it would be a
non-fiction book. I just needed more life experience in order to make it
happen, so it would be something I did in my 30s.In
2013, a friend of mine who owns a publishing company read something I’d written
at the age of 19 and offered to turn it into a comic book. I decided if I could
write something that good BEFORE, what could I do now? That was when I wrote
the comic book script that would eventually become The Last March (The Silent Champions Book 6), which led me
to writing the script that would be Darkblade
Assassin (Hero of Darkness Book 1).
Like our ill-fated hike, my life started out on a certain
path, went way off-track in totally unexpected ways, but ultimately ended up
someplace amazing. Now, I can’t think of anything else I’d want to do more, and
I can’t imagine my life without writing and storytelling.
Sometimes, taking those dangerous, rocky, and steep detours can be terrifying, but pushing through and moving forward might just lead us to truly amazing things in the end!
Your Turn: What Detours Did Your Life Take?
Did you always dream of doing what you’re doing now? Did you
follow a neatly planned career path that led you here? Or did life throw you
curve balls that forced you to adapt, and you ended up someplace totally
different than you expected?
Comment below and tell me
how your life either stayed on track or deviated wildly to end you up where you
are.
The post How the F*** Did I End Up Here? appeared first on Andy Peloquin.
