Graduate high school. Go to college. Meet Mr. Right. Marry Mr. Right… Blah, blah, blah. That’s the routine, isn’t it?

The truth about the situation is, until I graduated high school in the spring of 2015, I seriously, naively, believed that was the plan. I about lost it when I signed up for classes at the local college while my friends were planning their futures at colleges miles away. I was already defying The Routine, doing things the wrong way. Surely it wouldn’t end well for me and I’d end up being lost, alone, and an utterly clueless adult. Oh, no.

I spent the past year feeling like I was already one step behind. I didn’t go away for college. I felt like my dream of being a successful writer one day was painfully out of reach. I was going nowhere in life, I concluded. This was it. I watched my friends have the time of their life at their respective schools, with their new friends and big dreams. And yet, here I was. Lost.

I was scrolling through Instagram one day in late August when I came across a picture of a friend’s dorm. It was beautifully decorated, with lights strung all around and the cliché wall hangings dotting the walls. I was happy to see it, happy for her, because her life was just beginning. Next, a picture of her with her roommates surfaced. And then the anxiety creeped in on me, bringing tears to my eyes, making me freeze. That will never be me, I thought. I will never have that.

The reality was, and continues to be, that life hasn’t started for me yet. I have time to figure things out. I have time to figure out who I am, and who I want to be. One day, I will go away for school and have the beautiful dorm and adventures with my roommates. One day I will achieve my wildest dreams and be a successful writer. I am allowed to have days where I’m not sure about anything, sitting in my bedroom in tears as I think that my life is falling apart. I am allowed to be frustrated over things not going the way I want them to, like that one article that got denied, after I worked on revising it for weeks. I am allowed to take life one day at a time, and have times where I refuse to look at The Big Picture. I am allowed to focus on the here and now.

My first year of college is now over. And now that it is, I can say that I have never been happier to defy The Routine, if something like that still exists. I don’t care if it does, because I’m realizing that I don’t care if I follow it.

Many times in the past year, I have been lost. I thought I chose the wrong major. I thought writing wasn’t “my thing”. I was happy with a guy, after having relationships that didn’t mean a thing before him, only to have it come crashing down on me in the worst way. Many times in the past year, I wanted to give up. I was tired and numb. Life was screwing me over, and I was sure that I wasn’t coming out of the tumultuous time unscathed.

But now that it’s all over, I can say that I made it out alive. I’m better now because of the uncertainty life presented me with, and I certainly didn’t follow The Routine to get here. The reality of it all was this: That guy and I are better friends than anything else, and were never “meant to be”. There is no bad blood between us, and I wish the best for him. We are so much more successful apart than we ever could have been together. Yes, writing is actually my thing, and I seem to be good at it. I’m proud of my work. And no, I don’t have my life figured out, but I don’t have to. The Routine is not for me, and that’s okay.

My writing career is finally going somewhere. I finally possess confidence in my talent, and all I needed was for the high school chapter of my life to end and to be pulled into the mess that is adulthood to get to that point. I am seeing more success now than I ever dreamed of.

I feel like I’m living the dream, even though I still feel lost along the way. I was finally published after working so hard to succeed in the writing world. I let love find me instead of trying to make it work. I have incredible people in my life to share my successes with. Those same people are kind enough to pick me up when life knocks me down, and restore my faith when I need it. That is so much more than I could ever ask for.

I remember one night, after I attended a football game to see close friends, I thought yes, this is it. This is where I was always meant to be. The following evening, I sat around an Applebee’s table with my best friends. We were talking and laughing, reminiscing and joking, and I remember thinking that I had never been happier than I was in that moment. Past stresses didn’t matter, and neither did future stresses. My choices brought me to the here and now, and the here and now was perfect. That was good enough for me.

The truth of the matter is that you don’t need to do what society says to be proud of yourself and see success, be it tangible triumphs, or mental triumphs. You can be successful and have it all, but on your terms. Forget The Routine. Focus on you, and becoming the person that you want to be.

The Routine, and by extension societal norms, are complete garbage. It is pointless to live life with The Routine being my end goal. Sure, I’ll live a happy life, but whose life am I living at that point? The life I want, or the Happily Ever After life that society expects? My money, unhappily so, is on the latter. And God, I don’t want that to be me. Not anymore. The past year of my life has showed me that I don’t ever want to follow The Routine. I’m better off without it.

If I follow society’s expectations, I’ll never be happy. So I don’t follow societal norms. It’s okay to take life one day at a time, and I’m learning the truth in that as the days pass. I’m learning that it’s okay to be lost, if only because I have to be lost before I can ever begin to find myself.