Planning detour

I often wonder how I got here. Planning was a detour within advertising, one I never even thought of pursuing. When I took advertising in college talked mostly about Accounts and Creatives. Planning was never really discussed, and if it was it didn't make an impact on me.

I was assigned to a big project with working our head of Planning during my first month in advertising. During a cab rides back from a client's office, he told me he thought I had a "planning brain" and asked if I'd ever considered working in that group. The honest answer was no.

I was strictly on the digital path and nothing was going to derail me, certainly not a group called "Strategic Planning" that wasn't on my radar. I wonder what would have happened if I'd known what he was talking about and/or if I'd taken him seriously. That was almost five years ago. And now I'm here. How do things happen?