On 5 Year Plans....

I am a planner. I like to plan my day (and often before I go to sleep the night before). I like to plan my weekend and know where I am supposed to be and when to maximize the small amount of free time I have. I like to plan my meals and my chores and my outfits. I like routine and the sense of stability it offers. I am not one who is readily able to accept change and when it comes I go into flight and fight mode, depending on what the change means.

It's no surprise that when I learned about Stalin's 5 year plans (or was it Lenin....)for the economic state of the Soviet Union in grade 9, I was intrigued. This made sense to me...a 5 year plan. To know where I would be in 5 years if I stuck to a plan. Unfortunately, I wasn't paying enough attention in class to realize that as life happens, plans change and you can't really depend on them.

I am going to be 30 in about 120 days (or so...there's a ticker on the side of my blog). I was thinking this morning about where I thought I would be at 30. When I was 25, I fell for a boy and created a 5 year plan around him. If all had worked out, we would be married with a house and a kid by now (or a kid on its way). I forgot to focus on the boy and instead focused on my 5 year plan, not really caring if he believed in it.And of course, this led to the demise of our relationship (amongst so many other things because I know now that he and I were never meant to work out).

Other 5 year plans I have created have also faltered. To the point that now I feel wise enough to know not to make them. I create goals. And try to make them more short term so that I feel the motivation to complete them. But I don't make plans for where I should be.

5 years ago, I would never imagine I would be where I am today. I would never have imagined the relationship with Rainman that I have now. And this feeling of contentment with whatever happens, is supposed to happen. As a planner, this is the strangest feeling, albeit calming. I still plan for my day (and the weekends with him) as well as all the other little things...but no longer do I plan on the future. Things will happen, when they are supposed to happen, if they are supposed to happen.

I feel like I am declaring this state of independence from the Republic of Routine. Bring on the Perestroika.