I write this in response to my previous column about the difficulty of finding success in your hometown.

What I didn’t explain was how that 19-year-old hippie sweeping the floor of an auto-parts store eventually broke away and built a career.

My plan?

I didn’t have one.

Life simply took me down a very crooked road—and I was often slow on the uptake.

I didn’t join the military until I was 22, which by the standards of the time made me something of an old man. When I came home, I went to college on the GI Bill. No one in my family had graduated from college, and my family could never have afforded to send me.

By the time I graduated, I was older, married and raising a family. Eventually, I became the first person in my family to earn a graduate degree.

I wish I could tell you education had always been part of some carefully constructed career plan. It wasn’t. I simply had a family to support, a GI Bill and the growing realization that sweeping floors might not be my life’s calling.

I also had no intention of becoming a nurse.

I originally enrolled in a program to become an orthopedic physician assistant. Then the school closed, and I needed to remain enrolled to continue receiving the GI Bill income my family depended upon. Nursing offered an alternative, but there was a waiting list.

Then a cheating scandal created an unexpected opening.

That is not exactly the inspirational beginning most nurses put in their biographies, but it got me through the door.

Once in nursing, I decided to become a certified registered nurse anesthetist. Admission was difficult, but I was accepted. Then the school lost its accreditation.

Another road closed.

While waiting for the anesthesia programs to reopen, I began working toward an advanced degree. By the time the program became available again, I had changed direction. Instead, I returned to the military and attended nurse practitioner school.

After leaving the military, I held several jobs while trying to determine where I fit. Eventually, I found my way to Erlanger. I gave that job everything I had, and we experienced success.

Success is usually described as something that opens doors. Sometimes it does. But success can also become a trap.

When you perform a unique job well, the people around you naturally want you to continue doing it. You become more valuable exactly where you are. It is easy to remain where you are wanted, appreciated and comfortable.

Failure isn’t the only thing that can prevent growth. Sometimes the reward for succeeding in one role is being kept there far longer than you should be.

That may be one reason I was a late bloomer.

Then the hospital undertook a major reengineering project. It was a disaster. Almost by default, I acquired responsibility for several additional departments, giving me the opportunity to demonstrate that I could do more than the work for which I was already known.

From there, I rose through the ranks and eventually became the system’s chief administrative officer. Ultimately, I left Erlanger—and the community—to become a hospital CEO.

I never went back.

Looking backward, people often make their lives sound far more deliberate than they really were. We connect the events, smooth out the rough edges and describe it all as though we had been following a map from the beginning.

I had no map.

A cheating scandal gave me a place in nursing school. A lost accreditation redirected my education. A disastrous hospital project gave me responsibilities I had never sought. Leaving a place where I was known and valued allowed me to become something more.

I seldom knew where I was going, but I generally gave everything I had to wherever I happened to be.

Perhaps that was the plan—even if I was never smart enough to recognize it.

A straight road may get us there faster, but a crooked road shows us things we never knew we needed to see.

I would not have chosen every turn my life took. Some disappointed me. Others frightened me. A few looked like complete dead ends.

But every bend carried me toward something I needed to learn, someone I needed to meet or the person I was still becoming.

Looking back, the crooked road was not a detour from my life.

It was my life.

And somehow, I believe it took me exactly where I was meant to go.

Something to think about.

* * *