As we left our Chinese class and headed to work, my coworker and I started chatting. “What do you have going on tomorrow?” she asked. “I was thinking about heading to Golden Tower to haggle my way into a new hoodie.”
“I hadn't thought about it,” I said back, steering us into the crosswalk across the Fourth Ring Road. “Toss in lunch before we go, and you've got yourself a plan.”
Of course, I use that term loosely. Since arriving in China, I rarely make plans for more than a few days out. Nearly everything I have done in the past few months – be it sightseeing, drinking at the bars or trying a new restaurant – happened with an hour's notice. I set writing deadlines or set up calls back home, but I rarely think too far ahead.
I also cannot remember a time in my life I led such a schedule-free existence.
By my start of my sophomore year of high school, I had a plan.
I knew what courses I wanted to take, what clubs I thought I should join, and I had mapped out when each should happen over the course of the next three years. I would check with my councilor to see what Advanced Placement courses would be most suitable and what clubs looked best on a college resume. By graduation, I had amassed a veritable guide to college acceptance through almost obsessive focus on how high school would go.
Nothing changed upon my acceptance to university. Though I'd only chosen my major during freshman orientation, I was well on my way to having a three-year plan created by winter break. A binder held course lists and checklists and graduation requirements, and my scrap paper with notes and goals scribbled about. I had pamphlets and fliers for the organizations I wanted to join.
My friends couldn't understand: Why the need for a plan, and such a detailed one at that? They lamented about how unfocused they seemed in comparison, and tried often to coax a direct reason for my odd approach to college life.
I, too, wondered this. Why all the pressure to know what I'd take in three semesters? Where was the need for such long-reaching scheduling of free time and organized activity?
Well, there are a few reasons.
In many ways, it was about setting goals. I sat and thought about what I wanted to get out of my time at the university. Once those goals were set, I laid out what it would take to reach them. By the time I graduated, this meticulous attention to scheduling and detail helped me earn both my degrees – and two minors – in four years, while still holding a full-time job at the campus newspaper.
But the plan was also my security blanket.
There were times I'd clutch a little too tightly to that binder, especially those times I worried I wouldn't find a job after graduation, or when I saw others lining themselves up for more impressive careers. I poured over checklists to assure myself I was doing all I could to get where I thought I wanted to go. But the reality was, I still wasn't sure where that was. I was 20 years old – how could I know what I would want in 20 years?
While I was in college, the economy was fragile. Journalism and English literature weren't exactly money-makers in the best of times. I panicked that I'd set myself up for failure. The irony, though, was I was doing exactly as every college brochure will tell you: following my passions. So I stuck with the plan and followed it to the letter. At least I would have those degrees to gaze up at as I plotted out a new plan in my parents' basement.
Luckily, the plan had worked again. I took a job with a newspaper company that owned a number of publications along the Front Range of Colorado. I was in my own apartment in a beautiful town, hiking and sipping craft beer and spending time with my friends.
I was also living sans a plan.
There were no boxes to check off, no curricula to plot out. I was in the “real world,” and I had no clue what the next step would be. Without my binder or spreadsheets – my pseudo-safety nets – I started to get complacent. I started to settle. I stopped setting larger goals. For four years, I halfheartedly explored other opportunities while growing more sullen about my stagnancy. I saw the end of my rope and I wasn't sure what I'd cling to when that slipped away.
And then my Google Hangout pinged.
There was a spot for me in a start-up in China, if I was ready to move halfway across the world.
To the shock of everyone in my life – including myself – I was.
Without a mortgage to worry about, a relationship to factor in or a contract that tied me to a certain location, I had few reasons to keep me from heading across the Pacific. I realized my fear was the only thing in my way, and it was important I quash that insecurity by taking the sort of leap I had never considered before.
“I hadn't thought about it,” I said back, steering us into the crosswalk across the Fourth Ring Road. “Toss in lunch before we go, and you've got yourself a plan.”
Of course, I use that term loosely. Since arriving in China, I rarely make plans for more than a few days out. Nearly everything I have done in the past few months – be it sightseeing, drinking at the bars or trying a new restaurant – happened with an hour's notice. I set writing deadlines or set up calls back home, but I rarely think too far ahead.
I also cannot remember a time in my life I led such a schedule-free existence.
By my start of my sophomore year of high school, I had a plan.
I knew what courses I wanted to take, what clubs I thought I should join, and I had mapped out when each should happen over the course of the next three years. I would check with my councilor to see what Advanced Placement courses would be most suitable and what clubs looked best on a college resume. By graduation, I had amassed a veritable guide to college acceptance through almost obsessive focus on how high school would go.
Nothing changed upon my acceptance to university. Though I'd only chosen my major during freshman orientation, I was well on my way to having a three-year plan created by winter break. A binder held course lists and checklists and graduation requirements, and my scrap paper with notes and goals scribbled about. I had pamphlets and fliers for the organizations I wanted to join.
My friends couldn't understand: Why the need for a plan, and such a detailed one at that? They lamented about how unfocused they seemed in comparison, and tried often to coax a direct reason for my odd approach to college life.
I, too, wondered this. Why all the pressure to know what I'd take in three semesters? Where was the need for such long-reaching scheduling of free time and organized activity?
Well, there are a few reasons.
In many ways, it was about setting goals. I sat and thought about what I wanted to get out of my time at the university. Once those goals were set, I laid out what it would take to reach them. By the time I graduated, this meticulous attention to scheduling and detail helped me earn both my degrees – and two minors – in four years, while still holding a full-time job at the campus newspaper.
But the plan was also my security blanket.
There were times I'd clutch a little too tightly to that binder, especially those times I worried I wouldn't find a job after graduation, or when I saw others lining themselves up for more impressive careers. I poured over checklists to assure myself I was doing all I could to get where I thought I wanted to go. But the reality was, I still wasn't sure where that was. I was 20 years old – how could I know what I would want in 20 years?
While I was in college, the economy was fragile. Journalism and English literature weren't exactly money-makers in the best of times. I panicked that I'd set myself up for failure. The irony, though, was I was doing exactly as every college brochure will tell you: following my passions. So I stuck with the plan and followed it to the letter. At least I would have those degrees to gaze up at as I plotted out a new plan in my parents' basement.
Luckily, the plan had worked again. I took a job with a newspaper company that owned a number of publications along the Front Range of Colorado. I was in my own apartment in a beautiful town, hiking and sipping craft beer and spending time with my friends.
I was also living sans a plan.
There were no boxes to check off, no curricula to plot out. I was in the “real world,” and I had no clue what the next step would be. Without my binder or spreadsheets – my pseudo-safety nets – I started to get complacent. I started to settle. I stopped setting larger goals. For four years, I halfheartedly explored other opportunities while growing more sullen about my stagnancy. I saw the end of my rope and I wasn't sure what I'd cling to when that slipped away.
And then my Google Hangout pinged.
There was a spot for me in a start-up in China, if I was ready to move halfway across the world.
To the shock of everyone in my life – including myself – I was.
Without a mortgage to worry about, a relationship to factor in or a contract that tied me to a certain location, I had few reasons to keep me from heading across the Pacific. I realized my fear was the only thing in my way, and it was important I quash that insecurity by taking the sort of leap I had never considered before.
Now I approach each day with little to no idea where it will take me. I often leave home not knowing where I'll end up or when I'll be back at my apartment.
Will I head across town and spend my day traipsing around Sanlitun?
Perhaps I'll stay over at my friend's home in Andingmen and just catch Line 2 to Line 13 on my way back to Wudaokuo the next morning.
After work, will it be pizza at the nearby bar or hot-pot a few blocks away from the school?
I left my schedule open and took up offers as they came. And I was hardly the only one in my life doing so.
The Chinese I've met seem to work without rigid plans. After working together, they will ask if I want to join them for dinner. “We don't have anywhere to be,” they'll say as they insist on walking me to the subway station. In their lackadaisical way of walking down the street – slow, with no obvious purpose or time frame – it often seems Beijingers approach their day more casually than many I knew in America did (including myself). Solely through observation, I've found this city to operate at a fast yet unscheduled pace. Everyone is doing something, but aren't in any particular rush to get there.
In making new friends, I find most other expat-locals approach their day the way I do. Rather than make plans, we create WeChat groups to post plans into. If you'll be with friends at a brewery across town, just put down the time and place and see who shows up. If there's an event happening, you slap that into the chat and folks flock to where their friends are. Rarely do those I've met here have a schedule outside work commitments. Expat-locals drift toward where the action is. Even on a larger scale, few know where they'll be next year. Will they re-sign with their company, or instead head back to America? Nothing is certain, nor do they seem to want it to be.
Will I head across town and spend my day traipsing around Sanlitun?
Perhaps I'll stay over at my friend's home in Andingmen and just catch Line 2 to Line 13 on my way back to Wudaokuo the next morning.
After work, will it be pizza at the nearby bar or hot-pot a few blocks away from the school?
I left my schedule open and took up offers as they came. And I was hardly the only one in my life doing so.
The Chinese I've met seem to work without rigid plans. After working together, they will ask if I want to join them for dinner. “We don't have anywhere to be,” they'll say as they insist on walking me to the subway station. In their lackadaisical way of walking down the street – slow, with no obvious purpose or time frame – it often seems Beijingers approach their day more casually than many I knew in America did (including myself). Solely through observation, I've found this city to operate at a fast yet unscheduled pace. Everyone is doing something, but aren't in any particular rush to get there.
In making new friends, I find most other expat-locals approach their day the way I do. Rather than make plans, we create WeChat groups to post plans into. If you'll be with friends at a brewery across town, just put down the time and place and see who shows up. If there's an event happening, you slap that into the chat and folks flock to where their friends are. Rarely do those I've met here have a schedule outside work commitments. Expat-locals drift toward where the action is. Even on a larger scale, few know where they'll be next year. Will they re-sign with their company, or instead head back to America? Nothing is certain, nor do they seem to want it to be.
Walking through the Embassy District near Sanlitun, J.S. and I talked about our current “career paths,” if you can call them that. We marveled at how freeing it was to take each day at a time, and how more secure we felt about ourselves. We both felt far more optimistic about our futures than when we had it mapped out. Oddly enough, the loss of a plan helped us believe we were doing well for ourselves. We were assured our lives were headed in the right direction, as direction-less as we seemed.
As I stopped to snap a photo of the trees changing colors, he told me about those back home who misinterpreted this as being unmotivated. Some hinted we may lack the drive to pursue “real jobs”. But really, we were pouring ourselves into the school we worked at. I had re-committed myself to writing, believing as I hadn't before that I could develop my own version of greatness with that. J.S. was setting his sights on career paths he hadn't considered before.
Those same friends and family who asked about my need for a plan now ask if I've made one for after China. “Nope,” I say with a smile.
No, we didn't have a plan, but we also had no need for one. Not yet, at least. This was our time to forge a path rather than prescribe to the one well-traveled.
Much to my relief, I've finally left the binders behind.
As I stopped to snap a photo of the trees changing colors, he told me about those back home who misinterpreted this as being unmotivated. Some hinted we may lack the drive to pursue “real jobs”. But really, we were pouring ourselves into the school we worked at. I had re-committed myself to writing, believing as I hadn't before that I could develop my own version of greatness with that. J.S. was setting his sights on career paths he hadn't considered before.
Those same friends and family who asked about my need for a plan now ask if I've made one for after China. “Nope,” I say with a smile.
No, we didn't have a plan, but we also had no need for one. Not yet, at least. This was our time to forge a path rather than prescribe to the one well-traveled.
Much to my relief, I've finally left the binders behind.