These days I’ve been thinking about all the things I’ve done and achieved so far in my life. Looking back, I realize just now, that I never really had a plan B. I’ve always jumped into a new project without thinking of another plan to fall back onto if plan A didn’t work out.
Somehow this head-first-approach to life has made me tougher and I’ve been able to dip my toes into different industries. From Journalism to Event Planning, from Retail to Social Media and Blogging, all these different industries have given me different kinds of skills that I’m now trying to cultivate and fuse together in order to find the perfect job for me.
So my question to you is: Should you always have a plan B?
Back in college I remember talking to my friends and we all thought that we needed to focus not only on our careers in journalism, but on something else as well, you know, just in case the whole I’m-going-to-be-the-next-Anna-Wintour act didn’t work out and although I worried about not having an actual plan B, I am now happy that I didn’t then and I don’t now.
Not having a plan B opens my mind to 1000 different jobs I could try out and I never feel tied to having to pursue only one job. For how I see it, although I’m still not the editor-in-chief of Vogue, I have created my own, personal platform where I can still write and let out the journalist that’s in me. These days we call it blogging and it’s become a well-known career for creative people who want to share their thoughts and their creations with the rest of the world.
See, all I did with my journalism background is switch from one mean of publication to another. I wanted to write for a magazine and instead I ended up starting a blog.
Having a plan B means that you need to find another career path to follow, but also decide where to plant roots and I am not good with that. All I want to do is keep going back and forth between the two countries that I call home. I understand that now I need to make a choice, but until a year ago I was lucky enough to be able to live between Rome and Toronto and that gave me the chance to learn about the two different lifestyles these two cities live and about the work/private life balance they follow.
So, should you always have a plan B? My answer is no.
Maybe one day I’ll come up with a plan A and a plan B, but for now I want to keep all my options open and every single option to me is a potential plan A.
Do you have a plan B?
