Planning Out Your Life – Bah Humbug!

A disciplined, orderly life is the way to go – or so I’ve been told.

Make plans. Establish a routine. Organize yourself, your stuff and your life. That will lead you to the elusive land of peace, success, and happiness.

Bah humbug! (Refer above title.)

Where the heck is all this advice coming from??! Seriously people, do you realize that you’re spouting fantasy??!

Now, I’m a fantasy-loving kind of girl – who also has a ruthlessly logical side when necessary – so I did attempt to consider that such advice may be feasible to follow.

So I tried putting it into practice.

And guess what. It’s not feasible. Not unless you’re already well-established and successful enough to stop life in its tracks when it interferes with your schedule. And actually, I’m not entirely certain that it’s entirely feasible then either –It just has a higher success rate then . . . I think . . .

OK. Here’s the deal. I do plan. Painstakingly so. And since I’m a paranoid kind of personality, I often make back-ups – and then make back-ups for my back-ups . . .

And then it all falls amazingly, stupendously apart!

I swear I tried. (I still do in fact . . . in my weaker moments when I forget previous lessons.) I would have everything sorted out. I would plan for every contingency that I could. And then, with many good intentions, I would follow through with the plan.

And life would then choose a moment to throw me a curve-ball.

Actually, scratch that. Life would throw me a shower of frickin’ curve-balls! (And I’m not even sure some of them are curve-balls. I’m too busy trying to live through the attack at the moment to really notice!)

There I would be. Sincerely trying to live through the routine and lists I’d established – and then something would happen that would oblige me to throw up those to-do lists and schedules into the air and dash forward to confront the situation(s) at hand before I can even see those plans tumble uselessly to the ground!

A parent needing to change plans because of a meeting that lasted too long (and you’re too young to do it on your own); a sudden project from your college on an already tight schedule; a sibling giving you frantic call to pick them up from school before they (to put it politely) “spill their crumpets” in the lobby; a distraught friend or family member who you simply cannot – will not – pass over in good conscience if you dare to even consider yourself a good kind of person; a hospital emergency; an unscheduled interview call; a household accident that needs to be fixed; a nightmare that keeps you awake the entire night; finding out that the water in your apartment has been shut off for the next few hours due to a leak, a short circuit that puts out the electricity entirely in your house – or in your office when a project deadline is looming; a sudden fever or cold; spilled milk; burnt toast; an accident that leaves you with a sprained ankle or temporarily inhibiting injury; too many projects piling on your plate at the same time; and . . . and . . . Oh God, I’m drained . . .

And these are just off the top of my head . . . !

Yet another situation is when you actually do plan for most of this stuff – like inviting a few of your friends over at different dates, asking and advertising for different projects at different times – and all of them decide to show up at or around the same time!!!

*Sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!*

Planning doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. Because as far as Life is concerned, your plans don’t mean squat to it. It’s probably laughing its head off at how hard we try at all! (I swear I can hear it sniggering even sometimes!) And I’ve learned this lesson too many times to keep deluding myself . . .

But, I’m not the kind of person to just sign off my existence to chance either. Sure it plays a role. But, whatever the grand scheme of the universe, it is still my life. I might be just a small, insignificant speck in the galaxy. But I still exist, and I am alive. So move over, chaos, I have rights to my life’s control too. I’m willing to share. But if you don’t, I’ll fight for it all the way!

So I’ve reached a compromise.

I do still plan. And I do still make back-ups – and back-ups for my back-ups.

But I loosen the reigns I hold too. I don’t expect everything to fall into place. I even find it funny sometimes how out of whack my plans and schedules can go. It’s irritating, but it isn’t heartbreaking. (Well, OK, it is sometimes, but only sometimes – And I get over it quickly enough for the most part, I guess.) Of course things go wrong. But that’s part of life too. And it’s better not to beat yourself up about it when you know you tried your best.

So, when all that hard-won planning and organizing fall apart, I grumble and fume and cry, and then I sigh and just go with the flow. That works better for me.

Now, to all of you super-organized, I-need-a-schedule-to-function, 9-to-5, whole-life-planned-out, uber-productive, ultra-disciplined people out there who might be reading this and frowning at the utter foolishness and “untruths” of this post, I respond to you thus: You have my admiration (and possibly some level of envy). But people are made differently, and I am still comparatively young and have yet to figure out a lot of stuff in general. And this is the best way that I have found.

Plus, in my defense, in a well-organized life, how often would you actually have the opportunity to wind up walking for practically an hour or so in the scorching summer heat with a friend, utterly laughing your heads off in the street like a pair of hyenas at the ridiculousness of the situation you were in, because something in your day went off kilter? 😉

Those moments make for some fantastic stories, you know – And memories. 🙂

“Hey look, my To Do list! I haven’t been able to find this for weeks!”