This post was sparked my one of my dear friend's FACEBOOK posts. A comment she had written back to me in the post said "if I would have just stuck to the plan..." and my reply of "plans shans, they NEVER go the way you want them!"
I think it is good for everyone to make plans. I mean from little plans like picking up an item on the floor to making it big on American Idol. But I know that things rarely go as planed and even if the outcome is good or exactly what you wanted it might not have been the same plan you had to get there.
I would like to say that I am experienced in "not the way I planned it. My number one example.... I AM A MOM. To start, even child birth never goes ad planned, even if nothing goes wrong. You body takes over and seriously you just have to go with it weather you like it or not. Then later: I planed to get enough sleep, I planed to go to the store without a screaming baby, I planned to be there on time before that diaper blowout happened. In fact I think that is the hardest part of parenthood for some people... they plan and the little ones have other ideas or natural distractions of life. I mean changes of plans for parents is never ending.
I married "The Plan Man." Some people are just like that. They have to make constant plan about not only tomorrow but the next day and the next and then the next 10 years. I am not saying this is a bad thing, it helped balance me out a little and forced me to look a little bit more into the future than my plans would go. However sometimes I just could not understand it. Here I am focusing on what I need to do for a small portion of the plan and I could not think of it beyond that. I guess maybe because I feel that plan could change at any moment.
It took me 10years after high school graduation to finish college. I had a plan.... go to school and become a teacher. I went to UNC and my first year I did ok, I had planed to work 20 hours at my job and go to school. I ended up working more like 35- 40 hours while I had school. My grades started slipping and finally I decided I needed a break. I took a year and a half off and we moved to Denver and I started out at Metro State. Again things went well until I started working more. Later I had two children mid semester in 2007 and 2009. I was supposed to be done first in fall 2008 and then Spring 2009 and then fall 2009 and then finally I finished in 2010.
While I was focused on finishing my plan my Plan Man was trying to move it along... what was he going to do? Stay at his job or get a new one? Where would I get a teaching job? Should we move away from Denver? Everyday his life was consumed with trying to figure out the plan. I think he was so uncomfortable with how life had started not going to plan. Grad school was now on hold for him since the kids. Two babies within 17 months of each other, I still was not done with school, I had quit my job. They may or may not have been able to keep him at his job. He would wake up get on the computer, go to work, come home get on the computer, eat dinner and then get back on the computer... looking for the answers for the plan... what was next. It was draining him.
Five days before my graduation Andrew was in car accident that almost killed him, you can't tell me that was in his plans. He nearly lost a whole year because of the accident, hell we all did. That was not part of his plans. I was supposed to try and find a job right away, how could I when my husband needed me and my children needed me... that was not my plan.
You change the plan to what works and it may not be the same as the one you started with. The down fall of plans are you either dream too high and you plans will not get you there or you plan without dreams and you just do. Unexpected happens... good or bad. You can't tell me that divorced couples planed that they would be married and then divorced. You can't tell me that because someone had planed to be single and meets the person of their dreams is not right either. I mean it is even a joke to mess up and say "that was all according to plan." It is even a line in a show my kids watch.
I agree with you that plans can change. I didn't plan to complete my undergraduate degree at UNC in five years but that is what happened. I had planned to take a break from undergraduate and graduate school not really knowing how long that break would be. That break turned out to be about six years later. Although, I had applied to graduate schools in that time frame. When I was actually accepted to graduate school it came at an unexpected time and I didn't know that the application process would be the result.
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