Life Plan? Trash Can: How I Learned to Embrace the Unpredictable (and How You Can, Too)

How often do we create life plans for ourselves, and then get stressed when they don't pan out? And let's be real - how often do our plans ever really pan out?

Author Stephanie Montgomery (née Duchaine) had convinced herself early on that she’d move to Los Angeles after high school, get her big break as an actress and meet her soulmate. By her mid-20s, she figured, she’d be working in entertainment and have two (of her eventual four) kids.

Instead, she ended up moving to small-town Michigan and, via a wild series of events, made it to Los Angeles a decade later - only after getting a job at Google, which she left for the unlikeliest of reasons. Oh, and that whole "soulmate" thing? He came along in her 30s - a professional athlete, following an unexpected life path of his own.

When she hit 30, Stephanie realized that she had been spending so much time stressing over the plans that weren’t working out that she was losing out on the excitement that came with following an inevitably unpredictable path. Life Plan? Trash Can provides comedic reassurance to young women feeling the pressure to 'figure it all out' that while nothing ever looks the way that you thought it would, with a little faith and a lot of perseverance, you’ll end up right where you need to be.