Welcome to What Plans

Planning and being on top of a schedule has become a key part adulthood - for work and my personal life. If I want to see a friend or go out of town,  I need to plan for it and make sure that everyone's schedule is clear and that I can take time away from work. 

I sometimes have to plan brunch or a coffee trip months in advance to make sure I'll be able to see a specific person. It's not like high school or college when you could text someone "you free?" and then head over to Wawa. 

Having a plan is super important, but having flexibility is equally key to not going crazy. Especially when your plan is so far off the rails, it's not clear which direction you're headed in anymore. 

My motto since 2019 has been to "roll with it".

I have a preference to plan out my year well in advance. I like to know when I'm taking a trip or going on one of my mini-adventures not too far from home. I even like planning when I go on one of my cleaning sprees. I once planned an entire trip to Disney World with spreadsheets detailing where and when we had to be somewhere. I made sure to build in "spontaneous time" (though is it really spontaneous if you plan for it?).

However, even my best laid plans have blown up in my face.

No one expected the pandemic shutting everything down in March 2020. It seriously upended my life (along with most people's lives). 

At the start of the pandemic, I thought I had some security. But security is a luxury if I've ever known one.  

Despite my good fortune landing a full time job, I'm still a little on edge. I thought that my last job few jobs would be long term, but two layoffs have taught me that few things are truly long term. I've started wondering if I am just living for the next set back or (worse) disaster. 

That's not a healthy way to think. It's kept me anxious and on edge - unable to relax when I really need to.

We've started seeing some hope. With the introduction of the vaccine, things began to open back up and people felt safer. That was until Delta and then Omicron showed up to shut everything down again. Though it feels never ending, the patterns we're seeing with COVID are similar to what happened with the Spanish Flu. 

However, what might happen after COVID? Could there be another pandemic? What about what's going on with the economy? There's already reports that a recession is likely to show up within the next four years. How will that affect my life?

I can't answer these questions. I can't plan around them.

I can only hope that I'm prepared to "roll with it" again.

I know this post isn't the happiest or most optimistic, but sometimes writing out the things that bother us helps us work through them. I wish I had a crystal ball that would let me know everything would work itself out, but I don't. 

I just have to take things one day at a time.

Until next week.

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