make: plans

I don't know when I stopped making plans. I'm not talking about daily, weekly or monthly plans. Those I make and keep. In general, I love having a plan. For my day. For my week. I like a schedule and having tasks to accomplish or places to go. Plans are well-suited to my need for something resembling control over my life. And yet, at some point, I stopped making plan plans. The sort of plan that materializes out of a dream. The sort of plan that you make because you have a goal and you need concrete steps to reach it. It's not that I stopped having goals either. I set goals and resolutions, but they are little and often immediate. One year, it was my goal to stay connected to art, so I started volunteering at an art museum. The sort of plans I'm lacking are the five-year, ten-year plans. It's one of the interview questions I dread. In middle school and high school having five and ten-year plans was so easy.

Ok. The first sentence is a lie. I know when I stopped making plans. I stopped making plans in college. All my childhood dreams of what I would be when I grew up had fizzled or no longer appealed to me. Instead, I was much more interested in just taking classes that I loved. With no looking towards the future. I don't regret my course of study. But I do wish that I had a plan that led towards something big. It's been on my mind lately. It's still kinda hazy. But, where I've spent most of my life being practical and tackling those daily, weekly and monthly plans, I find myself thinking that a long-distance, like to-the-moon distance, plan holds a kind of appeal. I'm working on it. I'll keep you posted.

Image via here.