Baby Boomers are shaking things up again. While they may not be protesting in the streets or picketing outside schools, their influence is still redefining cultural expectations.

An article in this week’s Newsweek magazine focuses on Boomers who are choosing unexpected career paths. According to the article, an increasing number of the 50+ crowd are saying goodbye to corporate jobs to seek the freedom of the open road as truck drivers. Data in a 2005 study for the American Trucking Association showed that from 2000 to 2004, the number of truckers age 55 to 65 and older increased by about four percent.

As a personal example, over dinner last week, my architect father-in-law told my husband and me that he’d like to drive a truck when he retires in two years. He’s driven Chevy and Dodge trucks for years, so I guess it wouldn’t be such a stretch for him to be out on the road in a big rig.

The Boomer generation is sometimes referred to as the first workaholics and is often associated with aggressively climbing the corporate ladder to get ahead. But, it seems after a lifetime of structure, org charts and board meetings, many Boomers are ready for some freedom.

If you’re a Baby Boomer, what are your career plans for the next five or 10 years? Could you see yourself traveling the country as a truck driver?  Even if you’re not a Boomer, does a desire for a change of scenery tempt you to leave your current job?

Some people have a clear plan, a timeline with goals and strategies, to get where they want in their careers. They’ve laid out how they’re going to get there in a year, or 5 years or ten years and are moving forward in that direction. These are the type of people that more spur-of-the-moment people, like myself, often admire. We look at their spreadsheets and to-do lists and wonder how they got it all figured out.

At the same time, there’s something to be said for flexibility and going where life takes you. While I’m not saying it’s a good idea to have zero career plans, I am wondering about the value of having a more liquid idea of the future.

Instead of focusing on a particular job or career path, I generally think about my strengths and what I’m most passionate about. I don’t have a concrete 5- or 10-year plan, but I do plan to be using my strengths in a field that I’m excited about. This type of plan may not sound as impressive, but it’s worked out pretty well for me so far. It also seems to have worked out for Eric Nakagawa.

On the USA Today blog, Small Business Connection, blogger Jim Hopkins posts about how former software developer Eric Nakagawa became an “accidental entrepreneur” when he posted a humorous picture on his website of an overweight cat.

That picture became the catalyst for the “I Can Has Cheezburger” blog, a site featuring photos of animals with comedic captions. The site now garners about 200,000 visitors a day and thousands of advertising dollars. It’s unlikely that Nakagawa had a five year plan that included: “Start successful blog featuring cat photos and bad grammar.” Being flexible when there’s a fork in the career road gave Nakagawa the opportunity to do something he probably never planned for.

Do you have a 5, 10 or even 20 year career plan? Or, are you taking things one day at a time? If you have a plan, have things turned out the way you expected? If you don’t have long-term plans, how has that affected your career?