Day 76: Planning Life

In the last few weeks, I have become conscious that I am utterly, unremittingly, ridiculously rubbish at living without a plan.

I genuinely cannot function without one. If I know my plans for the week ahead, I am productive. Work on Wednesday and Friday? Fine. On Thursday I will fire off the applications. On the train on the Wednesday morning, I prepare for the process. Returning from the city on Friday, I will review my activities from the day before.

Boom.

Done and dusted. Success soon follows.

However, if I don’t have a plan, I just do nothing. In the face of more time, I become incapable of continuing at this pace – or any pace!

Take the last week as an example. The passage of positive productivity above describes pretty accurately the week that preceded it. After being offered a position as a freelancer, my first days on the job were filled to the brim with assignments. It was interesting, because it was new. It was addictive, because I was accumulating cash on a scale I hadn’t seen for a long time. But still, I snatched any spare moments I could find, to continue applying for the work I really wanted; the work that would satisfy a lifetime, rather than just satiate my temporarily barren bank account.

But then the new week arrived, and my emails went quiet. No jobs. No word of when more work would appear. I tried to trick myself into believing I had a timetable. ‘If I search for jobs’, I thought to myself, ‘then I will feel the pressure of impending deadlines!’

But then I didn’t even look. My one day-off slipped into a weekend-off. My ‘chill out’ day was spent organising a real ‘chill out day’ for the next day. I just drifted; waiting in a state of inertia to be given a plan.

Then on Friday, one arrived. Up I jumped. Before continuing on for my mid-morning train, I rushed through town, buying Christmas presents, grabbing an outfit for Saturday night. While browsing the shelves in Waterstones, I then found out my work for that day had been cancelled – but no matter! It had been rescheduled for the Saturday: for today.

I got up this morning with a sense of purpose. I completed what was asked of me. Surging forward, I unfortunately then slammed into the realisation that my plans for tonight are actually my plans for next Saturday. Clearly, I should use my calender for more than the pretty pictures.

Still, I was quite relieved. Instead of heading out into the cold night, I could watch the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special – and two more episodes of Borgen! ‘In fact’, I began to wander, ‘maybe I could watch some of the earlier episodes before it airs. With David Tennant and Billie Piper! Maybe they’re on Neflix? Oh, they are!’

This post is me shouting down a megaphone to myself to stop. To not start drifting again!

I’m not sure how I will make next week more productive than the last, or ensure that tomorrow is not lost, but I feel, instinctively, that this blog will be a barometer of my success. If it is being updated frequently, then I am once again working efficiently. If I have tales to tell, then I have managed to make my own plans, for my own time, rather than relying, like an unthinking robot, on the instructions of others. That, after all, is how lives rush by without being lived.