On Plan B
#fuckplanb is currently making its way around Twitter (thanks @amandapalmer).
It’s a nice thought right? A lot of people find this sentiment ‘inspiring’. Fuck inspiration. When people hear this, they’re really thinking ‘Fuck my job!’, ‘Fuck my parents!’, or ‘Fuck my student loans!’. I’m not sure that’s what AFP meant.
Plan A requires you to have a plan. You can’t all be artists. Deciding to #fuckplanb has more to do with who you are than what you are doing. If you’re sitting in your office cube today, thinking ‘God, I really wish I could just #fuckplanb and write for a living’, then you’re thinking about it wrong.
I bet if I plucked five people from an office who said they desparetly wanted to be novelists, sat them at a computer, and told them to write, there’d be no end of whining and excuses from at least three of them.
#fuckplanb is not a short-circuit to your dreams.
Plan B is for when you fail, and need to spend time dusting yourself off. It’s the parachute that deploys after you’ve hit the ejector seat, Plan B is the part of your life where you recognize that you’re an adult, as have responsibilities to others.
Don’t #fuckplanb. Just make sure it doesn’t interfere too much with Plan A, which I assume consists of total world domination.
