I'm A Planner

When I was watching Pretty Woman - way back when - I was struck by the line "Are you a planner? I'm a planner. Well, actually I'm not a planner. I'm pretty much a skin-of-my-teeth kind of gal." Paraphrasing here, but I remember the repartee well because I am a planner.

I come a family of planners. My mother is highly-organized, and it rubbed off on the rest of us. I think I've written about that before.

But where planning gets me into trouble is that I'm not good at switching gears midstream, to mix metaphors. I can plan to be spontaneous. I can be spontaneous if I have no plans. But if I have a plan in my head of what I'm supposed to be doing and when, I have trouble letting go of it and being spontaneous.

I think some of this inability to go with the flow comes from my highly-organized genes.

I think some of it comes from the fact that I work in an environment where I have to have a plan and then I have to throw that plan out the window probably at least two or three times a week. I always tell people that this is why I have cats instead of dogs. I can plan that my day will end at 5 or 5:30. I can do what I need to do so that I can leave by that time. And all too often, something will come up and that plan to leave on time goes boom.

And so in my personal life, I tend to be a little more of a stickler for staying with the plan. Because most of the time it's just me. And so I have more control.

Which is, of course, another factor in why I'm not good at being spontaneous. I'm usually in control. If I go into a situation that I didn't plan, then I'm less in control.

But the other reason I am not good at spontaneity is that I usually have so much to do that planning is the only way to get it all done. And even then, it usually doesn't.

So I'm a planner. And that's not likely to change. Because I'm not spontaneous.