Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Poor Planning: a Life Gone Astray

As I sat watching the video attached to this writing prompt, I kept thinking 'I've never planned anything such as a bridge or even a pathway.' It was then I realized I'd never planned anything including my life and that no planning was worst than poor planning.

When I was young my dreams were filled with goals I wished to accomplish and yet no plans on how to meet them. They were just there in my mind as something to be done tomorrow and if not tomorrow surely the day after. If I thought about it at all, it never was in panic, as I knew there was always time.

I filled my life with the daily minutiae of living always putting aside my dreams for the rituals of reality. I worked at a job not a career but it put food on the table and that is what was important. I raised a family, well two really, as one marriage failed (another poorly planned life choice). My second marriage is more successful and luckily, the children from both relationships are part of my life.

I realize I am a simple man with simple pleasures and I have been happy with my life. Still when I think back on all the dreams and aspirations I had as a lad with none accomplished, not even attempted I wonder what might have been. If I had joined the Peace Core, would there be a village somewhere that would think of me as they drew water from the communal well? Would I be a deeper person if I had spent a summer hitchhiking across Europe or Nepal? I can't answer these questions because you have to plan if you wish your dreams to become a reality.

I realize now I have lived my life with only one goal and that is to get to the other side. Don't get me wrong it has been a good ride but the feeling that I could have done more with my life now haunts me. I am now closer to that other side and looking back I see a chasm of dreams ignored. I'm running out of tomorrows and my yesterdays are beginning to feel empty and unfulfilled. I have lived my life as it was dealt to me such as the ball in a pin ball machine. Leaving your life to fate is a risky venture and lazy as well yet I feel it's now too late for me to change.

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