Planning without the Plan

(Just because I needed a picture and I just love Mad Men.)

In the last few weeks, I have really been evaluating my plans for 2009. I've been thinking a lot about my family, my career and even what television shows will be on the horizon and subsequently on our DVR. Being a planner, I don't wait until late December, it's just too late to map out a course, and I've never been one to procrastinate.

What dawned on me this week is that "planning" and "the plan" don't really go hand-in-hand. Instead, things are really out of your control. Honestly, for all of my planning, how could I have possibly planned for my 2008?:

• First, I changed jobs. I now work at an advertising agency, leaving a sales career behind.
• I attended my 10-year high school reunion.
• I changed my email address. This is huge for me, and so, it makes the list. Abandoning RLSooner and moving forward with a more grown-up, name/last name email address was my official inauguration into adult-career-hood.
• I've gone back to school part-time.
• I've traveled to New Orleans, Atlanta, Tallahassee, Chicago, Napa Valley, Kansas City, and Hawaii.
• I put my foot in my mouth a number of times.
• I watched and became enamored with the first two seasons of Mad Men.
• I joined facebook, started a blog, and became addicted to a blackberry.

So my new plan (because once a planner, always a planner) is to try and be organized, have a purpose that is bigger than all of this, and see what happens.

Tiger Lily to planning, because it's just an exercise in organization that has nothing to do with the actual "plan." I'm pretty sure that Someone Else has things securely under control.