Making Plans

I love making plans.  And not just when the New Year comes around.  I love making plans all the time.  I plan out my week every Sunday.  I make a daily plan the day before.  Whenever I start making a new album, I create lists and charts and diagrams to plan out how that album is going to be made and the steps required to make it.  Oh boy... does this Capricorn just love planning.

But you know what they say about plans, right?  We make plans and the Universe just laughs and laughs and laughs - in our big fat faces.  (Excuse my poetic liberties.)

So before we get too far ahead of ourselves, and you think I’m just here to brag about how good I am at making plans - let me cut straight to the point.  As consistent and as obsessive as I am about making plans, I am even better at throwing those damn plans away.

That daily plan I made the night before?  Yah, I start dismissing that thing less than 2 hours after waking up.  All of those meticulously laid steps on how to make that next album?  Those are ignored once I am neck deep in recording a song, and I have lost track of what day it is and the last meal I ate.

None of the above is all that interesting. But what I do find interesting (and hey, you might too) is what happens when I make no plans at all.  What happens is... nothing.  Nothing happens.  I wander through my day in a daze, getting things done here and there, but there is no internal mechanism pushing me forward in any particular direction.

Look, once in a while - I enjoy a good free-wheeling day when I accomplish very little and let my mind cut loose.  But most of the time, I like to get shit done.  And I cannot get shit done if I don’t even have a plan that I can ignore.

For years, I have been very critical of myself for not having the “self-discipline” to stick to a well laid plan that I spent time and energy preparing.  Even after many years of producing full albums and songs, I never looked back and said to myself, “You know, despite tossing out all those well laid plans, I still managed to get that [insert creative thing] made.”  Instead, I’ve just kept the mindset that - this next time around will be different, and I’ll do everything exactly as I said I would, and it will make everything easy and straightforward and I won’t have to worry about a thing.

Ha.  Bullshit.

Entering my mid-thirties has caused two very noticeable, very real things to happen.   One - I am sprouting grey hairs.  Two - I am realizing that various things I’ve criticized myself for are like that for a reason.  Making plans and throwing them away isn’t a problem; it’s the fucking point.  You plan in order to be prepared.  When you are prepared, you can be spontaneous and use your inner wisdom and instincts in a moment to make better decisions or work with the momentum you’ve got going.

So go ahead and make plans.  Make plans because it is a new year, a new week, or a new day.  Make plans because you just struck golden inspiration on a new project and you want to think that thing through all the way to the end.  But remember - and maybe this is just one long note to myself - be willing to change, modify, revise, or blow up those plans - because as much as you’d like to plan your way out of worrying about everything - you can’t and you won’t.