The trials and tribulations of a “Just Wing It’ gal

I set out to write 30 blog posts in 30 days ahead of my 30th birthday. Today is day five, and here I am, just getting around to writing blog post number two. So, friends, I thought I’d share the most relevant lesson I’m clearly still grappling with: If you don’t put together a plan for what you’re trying to achieve, chances are, you won’t achieve it.

Or, as my 10th-grade math teacher used to say before every exam (and trust me, at my school, we had plenty): “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Yes, I know Benjamin Franklin said it first, but I’d rather credit my favourite Lebanese teacher instead.

I’ve always been the chaotic one. It’s practically a family legacy at this point. When I first met my husband, I even tried to hide my disorganized ways, but within a few weeks, he joked, “You’d lose your head if it weren’t screwed on.” My cover was blown before our relationship even had the chance to blossom.

Sadly, my choppy attention span and “wing-it” lifestyle have always been glaringly obvious–thanks to the annoyingly-organised people around me. My sister, for instance, would tape a schedule of all her favourite TV shows (think The OC, 90210, and the like) to the wall above her desk, lest she miss a new episode release. My mum? Every morning, she woke up with a never-ending to-do list mentally mapped, and wouldn’t rest until every last task was checked off.

Then there’s my husband. Every Saturday morning, he wakes me up with the question: “What’s the plan for the day?” And nearly three years in, I still don’t have an answer. Meanwhile, he has a plan for every hour of the weekend, every day of the week, and every week of the month. He has Excel sheets upon Excel sheets titled things like “Yearly Plan”, “Financial Plan”, “5-Year Plan”, and “Retirement Plan”. He even has his post-retirement side gig all picked out.

The contrast, as you can imagine, is as blinding as the 11 AM sun after an all-night warehouse rave.

I spent my 20’s clinging onto my spontaneity for dear life. I thought it was my essence, my character. I scoffed at my family’s need to pre-plan everything within an inch of its life and proudly glorified my laissez-faire attitude. Every Saturday morning, I felt my blood boil at the question “what’s your plan?”

“I’ll see how the day goes,” I said with a shrug for three years.

Spoiler alert: The day never went as I would have wanted it to, and now, my home is a graveyard of half-finished paintings, un-baked clay trays and half-read books. If you were to search “Chapter 1” on my laptop, you’d be met with a dozen first chapters of novels I never had the time to finish. Except, I did have the time—on Saturdays, Sundays, and even an hour or two after dinner during the week.

What I didn’t have, infuriatingly enough, was a plan.

My family was right all along. Damn it.

So, as I sit here, four days behind on my “daily” blog posts, lesson number two is glaringly obvious: That novel you want to publish, the art you want to create, the friends you want to see, the runs you want to go on—they won’t just magically happen like you hope they would. You have to plan for them. And if things don’t go exactly as planned? Well, as I’ve learned from the best planners in my life, that’s okay. You don’t throw the whole plan out the window. You adjust, adapt, and keep moving forward with a slightly tweaked blueprint until you reach your goal.

I know my 30s will require more structure than my 20s did. Bigger responsibilities—and bigger challenges—are on the horizon, and I need to be ready for them.