What Happens While You're Making Other Plans

 

You know the saying life is what happens while you're busy making other plans. It defines my relationship with long term planning. Yes. I need a plan, it provides direction without being as bossy as the GPS in my car. Plans, for me, have to be loosely held otherwise all life gets crushed out of them.

Owning the boat we do and living aboard it were long term plans that came to fruition. Publishing - also a long term plan that worked. Sorta. In true plot-twist fashion, nothing quite works out the way you'd envisioned. I'd imagined a long string of scifi titles to my name by now. Instead, the publisher asked for anything that wasn't scifi. Well okay. There's that bossy GPS after all, yelling at me that I'm taking a left NOW into other genres until I find home.

The reason the cat in the sunbeam is up there is that he illustrates one of the finer points of long term planning. Every single one of us tucks our hopes and ambitions and drives into our goals. Those goals reflect some of the finest points of our aspirations for ourselves. And then the universe hands us a situation that shows us that our priorities weren't what we thought they were. Or maybe I'm just a terrible planner. Point is, the elderly gentleman above has set his paws on his path out of this life. It's a long slope for him, one that could take another year to two years, if I'm lucky. The trade off is that I'm on call for him 24x7. Medications. Shoveling food into him. He cannot be left for more than four hours at a time. I understand it's a little like having itty bitty kids - cause he gets me up every few hours of the night to tend him. And not a bit of this was factored into my long term plans. Any plans, really. Sure. I still have long term plans and I am still working toward them. But let me stress how this guy getting sick utterly altered what I believed were my priorities.

Most of us think we understand our priorities. I'd submit that we don't. Not entirely. We're human and we operate from a particular blindness that assumes everyone and everything we love will remain the same - unchanged. Forever. Intellectually, we get that's not true. But until the severe mental illness strikes you or one of the people you most count on in the world, until that panicked midnight emergency run somewhere with someone you'd trade places with in a heartbeat, your priorities haven't been put to the test.

Every one of us are going to run into bumps in the long term planning road. It's why I've learned to hang onto my plans loosely. Because when life happens, it sometimes pays to examine your fistful of plans and cast aside any that no longer make sense. Once you've done that, though, the vital thing is to keep going. Creep toward the goal. Crawl if that's what you have to do. Just keep moving in the direction of the dream. Whatever it may be. That's where you'll find me. Out there hobbling along my road, muttering at my GPS to shut the fuck up.

3 Keys to Successful Long-Term Planning

The first casualty of war?  The plan.

I still make 'em. I make lots of plans. I, on frequent occasion, even write them down. For I am...

List Girl, Planner Extraordinaire! 

~cue superhero theme song~

I do short-term, I do long-term, I do them by halves and by wholes. For plans are pathways to achieving one's goals.  

I am...not going to tell you a story. I am going to tell you 3 tips to setting long-term plans, 3 times to revise those plans, and 3 times to scrap the damn things. 

3 Keys to Successful Long-Term Planning

1) Set Goals within Your Sphere of Control

Yeah, yeah, it sounds glib, but too often people choose goals rife with dependencies on others. Guess what? You can't control other people.  Ex. "Hitting the NYT Best-Seller List" is a common long-term author goal. It's a shitty goal. Why? Because you're depending on 3rd parties to achieve that goal; the most obvious being consumers. There are the sneaky things too like other releases during that week, the often changing parameters of the NYT list, and reporting systems that don't report all books sold.

How do you revise that goal? Most people would think "go smaller, go micro, go with the task you can control that's just shy of hitting The List." That's goal-setting to benefit others (like your boss). I'm talking about setting long-term goals for your life. You go bigger, think deeper. What is it that hitting The List gives you? Once you figure that out, you adapt your plan to achieve it through means and methods within your control.

2) Be Realistic about Resources & Responsibilities

Whether it's money, family, flexibility, or knowledge, don't lie to yourself. Take those things into consideration when making the plan. Be brutal with yourself if you must, but be objective. At certain points along the route, you're going to assume additional burdens; similarly, you're going to shuck burdens along the way as well. If the words "I can't" crop-up as a road block, then think bigger and think differently. Innovate other ways of achieving the milestone. 

Any long-term goal should be a challenge to achieve. It's how we grow as individuals.  You will need to gain new skills, more knowledge, more experience. Allow yourself a learning curve. Give yourself permission to be a student. Assume there will be failures along the way. Celebrate them, learn from them, move on. You will never be omnipotent, but you can be successful.

3) Don't Be Tethered to Time

This probably flies in the face of every bit of goals and planning instruction you've ever encountered. Remember, we're talking about the long-term here. Short-term goals and plans, they're all time-based. Long-term isn't. So many people start their long-term goals with "By the time I'm XX age..." Age is a factor only in what others will let you do. If age is a constraint, go back to the first point in this list. Death is pretty much the only mitigating factor of time in long-term planning. 

3 Times to Revise the Plan:

1) If you've set the right goal, the plan can always be revised. It's a living pathway. As you learn more, revisions to the plan are expected.

2) When achieving another goal takes higher priority. 

3) When an influencer enters or exits your sphere--this could be technology, a person, war, etc.

3 Times to Scrap the Plan: 

1) When you no longer want to achieve the associated goal.

2) When you're dead.

3) Did I mention dead?

Remember, folks, spontaneity is fine as long as it's planned. 

Life, Death, and Long-Term Planning

So... this happened last week, but I hadn't shared here yet. THE TALON OF THE HAWK won Best Fantasy Romance of 2015 in the RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Awards!!! Look at that amazing company. I'm just thrilled that this book won. Not only because, well - winning! - but because this particular story really gutted me to write and remains a special book for me.
This week's topic in the Bordello is Long Term Plans - when to stick to the script, and when to deviate.

I'm going to tell you all a story. This should come as no surprise.

I should caveat that I have a precarious relationship with long-term planning. I absolutely believe in having a vision for my life. I have many long-term goals - they're simply not tremendously detailed. Those deals where you lay out one-year, five-year, ten-year plans? Mine tend to be along the lines of "visit Maldives, snorkel at Lord Howe Island and be BFFs with Tina Fey." I am decidedly NOT the person who sets salary goals, etc. I've tried. It doesn't work for me.

This is why.

David and I have been dealing with a THING these last weeks. It's not really about us, but it's impacted us both on profound levels. A few years ago, David's brother (who I'll call R for privacy) was diagnosed with lung cancer. A really bad kind. The news hit David particularly hard as it came not long after their father died. A couple of weeks ago, we found out that, after years of treatment and remission, the cancer was back and it didn't look good.

I haven't seen David cry many times, but this was one.

This threw us into a limbo of uncertainty. R was hospitalized a good thousand miles away from us, in a part of the country where it's both ridiculously complicated and outrageously expensive to fly. This means a thirteen-hour road trip. Moving to Santa Fe has come with this price for us. We're no longer a two- to four-hour drive from family. We agonized over what to do. David spent a lot of time on the phone with his other brother and one sister, along with our son, daughter and daughter-in-law. Plans were made and discarded any number of times. We made decisions and changed them as the news changed. David wanted to see his brother, but the brother would be in surgery, or too out of it to see anyone.

This ever-changing window of opportunity, a moving target at the end of a road trip that would consume at least three days, maybe more, was further complicated by a planned trip to Tucson Festival of Books, an eight-hour drive in the other direction. I'd cancel if I had to, but it was a huge professional opportunity for me - I was on a panel with Terry Brooks! - and it was also my mother's birthday. In addition, David just started a new job in Socorro, NM, about two hours south, in an acupuncture practice there. Newly made patient appointments would have to be canceled. We'd make the sacrifice without question, but only if it made sense to do so.

Finally the brother said he most needed to be left alone and not be bombarded with company and we respected that.

We went to Tucson last weekend and it was even better than I'd hoped. Everyone I met was wonderful. And Terry Brooks, one of the most gracious superstar writers I've yet met, read reviews from THE PAGES OF THE MIND to the audience before the panel started and gave me the most incredible boost. David and I had a lovely weekend enjoying the Tucson sunshine. News was that various surgeries had gone well, so all seemed well.

This last Thursday, David was in Socorro when we got the news that all was NOT well - the doctors gave the brother days to live and he was being sent home. Again we made massive plans. David would be back in Santa Fe by midday Friday, we'd drive up to Denver, pick up our daughter and grandkids, drive up to Cheyenne, stay the night with David's sister, then all make the final trip to northern Wyoming. Then a major winter storm hit Colorado on Friday, dumping heavy snow from border to border. We revised the plan to leave super early Saturday morning.

Now, I had tickets to see Amanda Palmer in concert Friday night at the grand opening of Meow Wolf, George R.R. Martin's art complex. I'm one of her patrons on Patreon, so I knew she and Neil Gaiman, another of my writer idols, had been in Santa Fe for over a week. She'd done a Q&A for patrons on Sunday night, but alas - we were in Tucson. When we decided to head to Wyoming on Friday, I scrapped the concert plan. I was going to give them away, but I couldn't find the email. When we scrapped that plan to go early Saturday, I didn't even think about the concert. Staying up late was the last thing we needed and, while I really wanted to meet Amanda, I was ambivalent. The timing felt bad, it seemed unlikely I'd get to talk to her at a gig like that, and the whole meeting-your-heroes thing. I'd had a great experience with Terry Brooks and didn't want to ping the universe for too much, you know?

So we went to bed early, and David and I got up at five am Saturday morning (yesterday), ready to be on the road by six. We turned on our phones to find voice messages that David's brother died during the night. His other brother said we might as well hang tight for funeral plans.

At a loss, up far too early, already caffeinated with no particular plans, we hung around for the morning. It was good, actually, to simply rest. David talked with family a lot. I read a book. I told David anything he wanted to do with the day was good by me. He suggested we go have lobster pizza and wine in the sun at Rooftop Pizza, raise a glass to his brother, and celebrate life.

We headed into town and the historic plaza was mobbed on this beautiful spring break weekend. Our favorite parking lot was full, as was our second favorite. Between the tourist drivers and pedestrians, it took a long time to wend our way back around. Then we nabbed a meter spot a few blocks away - hooray! - and walked to the restaurant. As we approached the street corner where there's this little courtyard area, I saw a redheaded woman changing a baby's diaper and singing.

We continued to cross the street, but I said to David, "I think that's Amanda Palmer."

I wasn't uncertain if I should go say hello, but David talked me into it, saying I'd regret it if I didn't. We crossed back. She'd just finished changing the baby and handed him off to a sunbathing guy who I knew must be Jason Webley.

I said, "Are you Amanda?" She smiled and said yes and I told her I was one of her patrons. She asked if we came to the concert last night and I said no, that we had tickets but... And in there she asked for our names. David had been hanging back, as he figured this for my deal, but I had the strange urge to explain, so I introduced him and said that his brother passed away that night so we didn't make it.

She was genuinely stricken and asked David it was unexpected and he said cancer She told him she'd just lost someone to cancer and that it was the anniversary of her brothers death - and she hugged him, long and hard - like a full minute. It was extraordinary because David doesn't like hugging strangers, but they connected in this and his whole body softened with the shared grief. And it hit me that he'd needed this.

Then we talked about death a little, and how David and I were going to eat lobster pizza and drink wine in the sun. She said that was the perfect thing to do. It was kind of surreal and awesome.

And perfect.

By the time we got up to the balcony a few minutes later, she and her friends had moved on. Our timing had been serendipitous.

You all know how I feel about serendipity.

So all of this is by way of explaining why I'm not much for long-term plans. I'll make them - but I'll also discard them in a flash, because some of the best moments come as gifts from the universe, bestowed on a schedule not our own.

As we ate lunch, we talked about how this is a wonderful thing about living in Santa Fe, that we could run into Amanda Palmer on a street corner. And David said, "now you just need to make Tina Fey be your friend."

Totally in the plan!

And always in the plan to savor this beautiful life we've got.