It’s Thursday and I’m Crafting my Life! May’s theme is recognizing our innate awesomeness. Because we are awesome. In the past two weeks I wrote about how moms are awesome, and how making stuff is awesome. This week, I try to convince myself that having no plan is awesome. Let’s see how well I do.
It’s been just over a year since I got news of my lay-off. In the aftermath, I found myself in a bit of a tailspin. I love plans. I love knowing exactly what is going to happen and when. It doesn’t always even need to be a good plan, as long as it’s a plan I’ll follow it diligently. My job provided me with that structure, that predictable routine. Without it, I felt directionless.
I decided that I would try going plan-less for a while. After all, I’d worked at the same job for a decade. I didn’t really want to leap right into the next thing. So I thought I would take some time to de-compress and figure out who I was, now that I wasn’t ‘Amber the firmware engineer’. I planned some plan-free months. I guess old habits die hard.
My plan-free plan didn’t stick. I couldn’t stomach it. I started picking up little projects and visioning a new life. My new plan was less about where I would be at 9:00am on Monday morning, and more about a few things I wanted to do this month, though. Even if it didn’t seem like it, I was growing and stretching in a new direction. A slightly less obsessively structured direction. I was loosening up on the planning, even if I didn’t totally ditch it.
Like anything, ditching a well-worn plan is a process, and in the past year it’s gotten easier for me. I’ve explored new directions and I’ve adjusted to the rhythm of my life as an at-home mom. I’ve become less and less married to the idea of a plan. I try new things, go with the flow and ask myself why not. I see this time, this planless time, as a period of immense growth. It’s like a gift to me, a little pocket in my life while my children are small to explore how I want to spend The Rest Of My Life. Not everyone has this luxury. I am grateful for it.
And yet, sometimes I hate not knowing what’s coming up next. I crave some structure. I long for the safety and predictability that a roadmap brings. I start thinking of all the little perks of a 9 to 5 job with longing. Coffee breaks. Meetings. Checklists. Private bathroom stalls that little people don’t follow you into. Personal growth is rarely comfortable, and so the grass can really start looking greener on the other side.
Other times, having no plan is awesome. It has freed me to network and imagine and experiment. I write my heart out. I volunteer and spend time with friends and make things. I re-discover who I am and what I believe in. And I firmly believe that the lessons I’ve picked up by stepping outside my comfort zone will stand me in good stead. If I do return to the predictability of a job, I will not be the same person. I will bring my experiences and self-knowledge with me. That will be a good thing.
I guess that, if I have to, I can always formulate another plan. But for now, taking this time to wander without a clear map, is right where I’m supposed to be. And I embrace it, in all of its ambiguous awesomeness.
How do you feel about plans? Do you find them constricting or reassuring? And have you ever lived without one? Please share!
May’s Crafting my Life series is about recognizing our innate awesomeness. On the last Thursday of the month, which just happens to be the 27th, I will include a link up. To participate, write a post on this month’s theme anytime in May, or track down a post you’ve written on the subject sometime in the past, and add yourself to the list. Then read everyone else’s ideas and thoughts and be inspired! Check out the link-ups from January, February and March to get a feel for how it works.
I fly by the seat of my pants, baby! Whoo hoo!
.-= Carrie´s last post ..22 months: Is there an echo in here? =-.
I find that plans are good for some thing! But not always for evrything. I like to have plans but not set in stone. Sometime things change and you have to go with the flow.
Despite my outer facade of cool, crazy, impromptu style (ha ha ha), maybe its just a crazy facade, I NEED a plan. Not always a fully fleshed out plan, but a plan none the same. This past week I almost resigned, rather I threatened resignation, and did so with just the most vague suggestion of what to do next. It was a ‘if this job, which in itself is a fabulous job, doesn’t stop causing me so much stress because of personnel relations I’m gone.’ My big bosses seem to have stepped up to support me and to put an end to what was happening, but if it doesn’t work…
Phew, apparently I needed to get that off my shoulders somewhere where my bosses probably aren’t looking unlike my blog. Yes, I like a plan. One with flexibility.
.-= Tepary´s last post ..Sneaking off to watch Harold and Maude =-.
Tentative plans are always good. It’s important to have something in mind when I set foot out my door. But when it comes to long term plans, I guess those need to be tentative as well. But I’m also a person who thrives on change. I love the way change makes me feel. I like the unexpectedness of it all. I feel vulnerable and exposed, but it also makes me feel focused. Like, I cannot control the change, but I can control how I am throughout the change. When I have no change, I feel like I’m aimlessly floating and my mind is too scattered. I have a hard time making change happen. Why is that?
.-= Sara´s last post ..Stuck in a funk. =-.
I think the trick to enjoying life without plans is whether or not you’re having that structureless time enforced on you or you’re doing it by choice. I was out of work for one year by choice when I moved with my husband to Germany–and it was the best year of my life. I filled my time with learning a foreign language, making all sorts of new friends, reading and journaling and bike riding to my heart’s content. I was also spent eight months out of work not by choice after we moved to Canada, and I had to wait for my permanent residency to go through. That was the darkest period of my life and I never found any traction or structure during that time. I’ve often wondered, though, if it’s possible to psyche yourself up to enjoying an enforced period of structureless time as if you had planned it. You certainly see to have managed it pretty well.
.-= Sarah´s last post ..A Great Reader =-.
LOL – I laughed at your writing a plan for the planless period of your life having just scheduled my week off thru lists and a daily routine!!
When I first emigrated to Canada as the trailing spouse I was jobless, planless and suddenly my own master 24/7. For the first time in my adult life I could think freely without time limit or constraint – v liberating. Then I had my son and someone else’s routine was imposed on me (with a lot of love and fun I must add) so I made plans for two.
And now he’s more independent, in the schooling system, and suddenly I’m left again with chunks of time to fill during the day. I still have no plan, I do have a small home business, I have housework, I have ideas – while I still have no concrete plan, cos I’m still new to this planning around another dependent person stuff aka parenting/motherhood, I’m finding that routine is key right now or I risk wasting all this lovely time that’s been given to me.
I am now frustrated without an obvious plan but it’s a million times worse if I don’t have a routine in place (hence the scheduling for my week off).
.-= pomomama aka ebbandflo´s last post ..how does a 24/7 SAHM take a week off? =-.
I’m one of those laid back moms who *thinks* she likes no plans, but really thrives with one. We like to have a plan so we can break it!–lol.
But seriously, in general, we like to keep a bigger plan–almost like a framework– and then watch it evolve. We know our big picture goals and sometimes we create smaller detailed plans to work towards a bigger goal, but life changes so much it helps to be open.
=-.
.-= Hillary´s last post ..flowers13: @xxcaro thanks
I like plans too. And I was laid off in October. It can send you in a mega downward spiral if you don’t land a new job right away–I was in a funk for a LONG time. Then I got it in my mind to take things one day at a time. Can I take care of my son’s needs? Can we eat? Can the bills wait another day? Ok, then I think we’ll do all right. It has made a world of a difference, and I found the motivation to pick up freelance work and other paying opportunities.
I am almost the opposite. I went most of my life with no plan, considering myself such a “free spirit” that I didn’t need one. But I found that not having a plan of any sort actually ate up a lot of my free time and creativity because I was always putting out fires. Now, I always have a loose plan…but it is flexible, and often changes. I need it to keep me on track.
However, when I first started “getting planny with it” I was really strict with myself for a while. Sometimes I think, in order to make it to the middle, you first have to push wayy over to the opposite side from where you are. So for me, that was having a strict plan, and for you, it maybe is having NO plan. Eventually you settle somewhere back in a healthy center.
I’m no good with “schedules” but I cannot function without a “plan”!
Day to day my life is fairly unstructured, but I have a big picture, a set of long-term and short term things to acheive to make my life worthwhile. Quite often they involve financial, domestic and creative goals.
The time in my life that I did not have a plan (or a creative outlet) I became clinically depressed — THAT’s how important a plan is to my well-being!
.-= *pol´s last post ..I’m BAAAAACK! =-.
I always have a plan, though sometimes my plan is to enjoy “having no plan until I get a plan” which is really still a plan.
.-= AmberDusick´s last post ..Home & where AM I from anyway? =-.
This was a good post for me to read today because I am struggling with not knowing what I’m going to do for work when we move to Victoria and not knowing where my daughter will go to school because the schools I want her to go to are quite a drive away from our new house and without knowing what I’m doing and what the hours will be (or my husband for that matter!) I don’t know if it will be feasible to register her for these schools. Anyway. I like plans for this reason. but I guess when it just isn’t possible to have a plan right away you have to learn to go with the flow. I’m trying not to think about it too much before we move since there is nothing I can do about it anyway.
.-= Melodie´s last post ..Breastfeeding Moms Don’t Have To Introduce Cow’s Milk =-.
You are so incredibly awesome. You do write your heart out and your writing is top notch. I think your plan to have no plan is a good idea . . . I’m a believer that life throws these twists and turns into our path so that we don’t get lazy or bored. Thus, we learn more and maybe, just maybe, we find that we have new passions and new loves . . .
I love plans. But sometimes they can be constricting. But I am not ready to go without one.
.-= Capital Mom´s last post ..Little =-.
I used to be a planner – before kids. I figured as much of my future out as I could. It actually worked out quite well!
After kids, I have learned to be more flexible – I have little choice in some cases. I have also found that by relaxing, new opportunities, unplanned and welcomed, have found me along the way.
Sometimes plans, or the disappointment of changing plans, interfere with new, wonderful experiences.
I think that I love a plan, a structure, a routine. But when I have one, I resent it horribly. Where does that put me? Time will tell.
.-= harriet Fancott´s last post ..Wordless Wednesday =-.
My plan is “see how it goes, eh?”
.-= Betsy´s last post ..Dudes! =-.
The first time I ever went without a plan was for our honeymoon, as an agreement to be more relaxed and spontaneous, in my husband’s style. We drove along the west coast and chose what we’d do and where we’d stay each day. It was an adjustment for me, to say the least!
I can’t believe a year has gone by already. I’ve been reading you for more than that now! Congrats on figuring out so much about yourself.
.-= Lady M´s last post ..Time Warp =-.
Even if I try not to, I still have a plan. I’m a planner by nature. I can’t help it.
.-= Marilyn´s last post ..Picking a Blog Host is Important =-.
I like to have a general plan, but no fixed structure. Problem is, my plans never happen because of all the plans and unplanned things of the rest of the family.
.-= Francesca´s last post ..Corner View ~ collection =-.
I am a toddler at heart I think. Thrive on structure, routine, predictability. I don’t do well with change. If I was to be laid off today I would have a total and utter meltdown. But I can see how it could lead to wonderful things, good things, even things full of potential. I just don’t have the stomach to explore the idea yet. So good for you for discovering the beauty and for going with it. You and your children will be richer for it, and in that end that’s what matters.
.-= Christine LaRocque´s last post ..Seven Years Old =-.