Origin 4 min read May 2026
I had my life all planned out by the time I was 15. Or so I thought.
The plan wasn't the problem. The planning was.
You don't need a better plan; you need to know what runs underneath the planning.
Plans are good for what they're good for: getting started.
The danger is treating your plan as the destination. Each curveball becomes a problem to fix, not a sign to read.
What if the curveballs were the better plan getting through?
Context: Asian male aspiring to become a full-time musician in Singapore in the late '90s was the epitome of pipe dreams.
The somewhat pragmatic (naïve) plan to get buy-in from my parents, by age:
That was the plan.
My dad couldn't understand. Music wasn't a profession most people in Singapore pursued; not practical, not viable. My mom mediated calmly. The discussion ran a few months, with less drama than you'd think. My parents had concerns but didn't push back; they let things play out.
Years later, when I chose the US for music school, my mom decided to sell our home (where she'd raised three children) to fund the overseas education. She convinced my dad. Roughly 5% of Singaporeans own landed property; 80% live in HDB flats. Mom's argument: "what we owe the three of you is a good education and not a landed property."
First curveball
Years of preparation had pointed towards one direction: a posting to one of the music units, SAF Band or MDC. The signal seemed clear; the combat assignment reversed it. I appealed repeatedly to be reconsidered; unsuccessful. Despondent.
Two years in a combat unit. I kept striving for a music-unit repost; it never came. Yielded to The Author to write this chapter His way.
Near the end of my service, a door to doing music full-time opened; not the music career I'd planned, but still music. I hadn't auditioned for it; I'd only stopped striving for it.
Second curveball
Failed the Music school audition, but still admitted to IU. Failed auditions 3 more times on campus. Got into the Recording Arts program instead, so dignity preserved for still getting into the Music school. While an end to double-major plans, the path to a Tonmeister postgrad — sound master, the academic shape of audio engineering — still felt like I was on track.
Third curveball
Meeting the love of my life in Music school. Three weeks before our wedding, she announced she wanted to stay for her Masters in Piano Performance; my postgrad plans collapsed right then.
Months later, on a cold late-Fall afternoon, I walked around campus feeling aimless. Passing by the School of Informatics across campus from the Music school, I walked in on a whim to explore opportunities. Walked out with a plan to enroll in the HCI/d program.
When people ask how I got into design, I tell them: I walked into it. Literally.
Providentially, The Author was steering me towards the best career path, far better than I could ever ask or imagine. A long career in tech in one of the best eras and areas provided financially for the large family we've been blessed with. Almost no way that would've been possible as an audio engineer or academic.
Incidentally, my brother went on to study music at QUT, paid for from the same home-sale that funded IU. The dream I drafted at 15 was lived in full. Just not by me.
The plan was a structure I'd laid over a life. The course had already been set by The Author, marked out before I could see it.
Hebrews calls it the race marked out for us.
I had been correcting a plan that wasn't mine to begin with; it was the better plan getting through.
Your plan keeps bending. You keep correcting it.
What if the bending isn't the failure? What if it's the same thing it was for me — the better plan getting through?
What's the plan you've been correcting, and what's underneath it?
The ALIVE Mirror names where your planning has been the work, and what runs underneath the planning.
Take the ALIVE Mirror →