IWSG: 42

~ J.S. Pailly

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by PJ Colando, Pat Garcia, Kim Lajevardi, Melisa Maygrove, and Jean Davis.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more.

I’m turning 42 this month, a truly momentous age in the life of any geeky person.  For much of my life, I’ve been a collector of inspiring quotes, so I thought this would be a good time to share a quote that’s come to be one of my favorites:

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

– Douglas Adams

I have to admit, the first time I heard this quote, I did not like it much.  I was very young at the time, and I was very ambitious.  I had a very clear vision of what I intended to do with my life.  I had what I called my “master plan,” and I believed that so long as I followed my master plan I would become a rich and successful author.  The notion that Douglas Adams, one of the authors young me admired most, could end up where he ended up in life by accident didn’t make any sense to me.

I managed to stick to my master plan fairly well for a while, up until the 2008 financial crisis.  Master plans don’t hold up well in the face of global financial crises of that magnitude.  Anyway, very little in my life has gone according to plan since then.  Young me would have been distressed to hear that.  Young me would have assumed that meant I’d given up on writing by now.  Writing careers are hard.  How could anyone pursue a writing career without a plan?

Well, it turns out my love of writing is more resilient than that.  No matter what happens, I keep writing.  Even on days when I hate my own writing, I still feel that urge to write.  And I’ve come to appreciate how all the unplanned events in my life and in the world around me help make me a better writer.

How about you, friends?  Whatever age you are, whatever place you’re at in life, are there any inspiring quotes that have helped you along the way?

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Published by J.S. Pailly

18 thoughts on “IWSG: 42”

  3. I wish I have a master plan but then again, I never could follow it as I don’t seem to follow plans too well.

    I love quotes and I have a whole list of them. The one I have on my blog’s comment section (below it anyway) is by Kurt Vonnegut, “To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.” – that, I think is very apt for any writer or creator.

    I wish you success in whatever plans you have and will have later. Have a great birthday.

    Have a lovely day.

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  6. I’m impressed you had a master plan. I never had my act together enough for that.

    I don’t know if I’d say it’s inspirational, but “The perfect is the enemy of the good” often helps me move forward in many endeavors.

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  7. I don’t believe in accidents in the existential sense, but I do believe I got to be where I need to be, both as a writer and otherwise, rather than where I had planned and thought I wanted to be. I often look back and think that if I did get to where I had planned to, I probably would have burned out big time. So, in the large since, I’m glad I’m at where I am now. I may not be a big selling author, but I’m still writing and publishing at a level where I can manage it and take care of other parts of my life.

    So, that quote by Adams makes a lot of sense and so you picked a really good one to share. Thanks!

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    1. If things had turned out the way young me wanted, I would’ve burned myself out big time, too. In fact, I’ve known people who had early success in the publishing world and ended up leaving writing all together. I would not have wanted that for me.

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  8. Thanks for stopping by my blog. I’ll be 45 this year and I feel it. I too relate to the Douglas Adams quote. Most people think me silly, but it hasn’t changed my perspective on liking the Dr. Seuss quote, “Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you.”

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  9. Happy birthday! I’ll be 53 this month, and wow… didn’t end up where I expected, but I sure wouldn’t go back and change anything. I like myself far more now than I did when I was younger. One of my favorite quotes: Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little. (Tom Stoppard)

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