Calculated Spontaniety and Other Practices

If you know me, then you know that I am a man with a plan. Well actually, I'm a man with alot of plans. And I'm a man who likes to make alot of plans. I guess this goes against the normal Teen Credo (founded in 1996) that says "Dude, live your life in the now! Don't tie yourself down, go hella-crazy!" It says something like that, I can't remember it word for word because I cheated on my teenager exam. But you know how it goes, and you yourself just may be one of the normal kids that just likes to let go and let whatever happens happen. I like to calculate my happenings, of course that means that more often than not they DON'T happen.

I don't know exactly when I started planning things, but I would gestimate that it was around the time I got into high school. It just makes alot of sense to me: what better way to make sure you make the most out of every day than to make sure you can do the most in every day. That's not to say that I'm a busy person, but if I can know ahead of time when me and my buddies are hanging out, then I know to do other things later or earlier. I also get this trait from my childhood. I've been hanging out with most the same guys since gradeschool, and back in the day I would always ask my parents if they could come over... but my gradeschool chums sometimes forgot to ask their parents, and therefore weren't allowed over as much.

The same is true today, what with my new found independence, I like to know when I'm meeting people, when things are going down, and for how long. If it all worked according to plan, then there wouldn't be alot of boredom in anyone's life, there wouldn't be awkward moments of "what do we do next?" and telling people to leave would be a heck of a lot easier... because you set a time. Of course, that last thing, on setting a time limit, isn't always necessary, because I rather enjoy just going about my business without a time limit.

It's hard to live the life of someone who likes to plan things out. As I said tonight in a conversation with a friend of mine, more often than not, your plans will fail. And the more planning you do, the more you set yourself up for disappointment, loneliness and wasted opportunities. You tell someone that you will hang out with them in the evening, but you never hear from them, and in the process of waiting for some sort of word, you turn down other offers to hang out. And of course, in the end, your plans never work out because the original person bails as well. These sort of ironic twists happen all of the time to the dedicated planner. If you didn't plan so much, you wouldn't realize when things didn't work out because you would be having too much fun doing other things. Then again, when your plans do come to fruition, they really kick ass.

I must add that I never blame any of my friends to causing my plans to fail. They themselves aren't the biggest fans of planning out everything, and so I just kind of wrangle everything together for my own sake. And so they are just doing what they do, and if it doesn't work for my plan, it's my own fault. And in alot of cases, I wouldn't have it any other way.

The question posed now is "Am I better off by planning, or would I be happier living life by the cuff of my sleeve?"

Because I definitely CAN be spontaneous, don't get me wrong. I am fully capable of not thinking at all of the future, and just going around doing whatever comes up. There are even times when I will do this... but I always feel a little naked while doing it. (Oh wait, that's just me forgetting to plan to put on clothes.)

Wow... I hope this doesn't make me seem like Danny Tanner or anything. Otherwise I might have to delete this post.