The Worst Case Scenario

Nothing is certain or permanent. Most of us are scared of failure, scared of things not going according to plan or scared of not even being sure what that plan is. So often post-college I find myself too scared to take a chance on something because I am scared it won’t work out, this fear leads to a lot of inaction in my life, I think this is something a lot of twenty-somethings faces. You’ve graduated from college and are left saying “now what”, when whatever you got a degree in doesn’t lead a to a job right away, those “now what’s” leads to settling for something other than what we truly want out of life and becoming complacent and feeling the weight of failure bearing down on us.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this recently, I have a degree in Design & Technology from a fine arts school, and I have experience as doing the commercial design but at the end of the day, my current day job is working in a completely different direction. I’ve spent a lot of time considering this a failure on my behalf, a failure to launch so to speak.

But then, what exactly am I failing at? What is it that I truly want to be doing right now? In my particular art school, there was a lot of pressure to have a lot of shows, to really put yourself out there to become the next big art star, and for a while, that is what I felt like I should want for myself. That's what it seemed like I should be doing with my degree and anything short was a failure.

These negative feelings of failure lead to a sharp decline in my creative practice, despite having a job in which I am literally free to do my own work all day long.

This is when I realized that I was never going to be an art star and I was probably never going to be some big name designer with a huge agency. This is usually where most people tell me I just didn’t work hard enough to make this happen, and you’re right, I didn’t, because as it turns out that's not what I WANTED to do. I probably could have had something close to that if I really wanted to, but I didn’t put the energy into that because that's not what I want to do. Perhaps I don’t exactly have my end game figured out yet, but it's certainly not the end of the world.

I think a lot of you are in a similar boat, having got a degree in something that you enjoy but don’t necessarily want to be your entire life and are now left in a place of fear to try something new.

It’s time for PLAN B. (Or C, or D, or whatever letter plan you find yourself on). Something that I have learned is that you can ALWAYS reinvent yourself and that in life its crucial to make peace with the fact that almost nothing ever goes as planned.

Alternatives are okay.

Most of us believe that if our original plans didn’t work out that everything is lost, but this is SO not true. There is always a plan B, a different route to take, so even if everything falls apart in a wave of unthinkable chaos don’t worry! Remind yourself that there are always other options, even if you are scared to reach for them.

When you are thinking about your potential plans and failures think about this:

Will you survive it? Learn from it? Laugh about it or through it? Be able to make art from it?

If you answer yes to these, would the failure really be that bad?

And hey if it really doesn’t work out, like I said there's ALWAYS a plan B, there are few really spectacular plan B’s:

Teach English overseas. Got a college degree? Then you are qualified to teach English to kids and adults all over the world, some simple google searches bring up loads of programs you can apply to.

Looking to spend some time in nature? Become a park ranger! There are national parks all over the country you can apply to for a whole host of park ranger jobs and get to spend some time in some of the most beautiful places in the country.

Enjoy meeting people of all different nationalities? Work at a hostel! Both in your home country and out of it, there are LOADS of hostel jobs to be had, as workers turn over fairly frequently as people travel around.

Got a “plan B”? you’ve been kicking around? I’d love to hear about it!