No Plan

For the vast majority of my life, I've had big plans for the future. We all do a bit when we're kids. It starts with what you want to do when you grow up, which you are asked constantly by every adult who wanders into your general vicinity. From there, you're off the races. With each grade, with puberty, with your first job, with college, and more, you make plans. Once in college, you have to make plans for each semester and have a specific academic plan for courses that will both allow graduation and the attainment of your chosen major. Sometimes, as in my case, college doesn't end and you end up chasing graduate and professional degrees, largely because your plans probably didn't work out. Eventually though, other plans will be necessary. A career and/or a family is the ultimate plan for most people. What happens, then, when there no longer is a plan?

As I alluded to in the opening paragraph, my plans have not worked out. Career, family, a big house with a projector TV room, or whatever other big plans I might've had are all beyond my reach. What I have is a status quo that allows me to have fun. So, if you insist on calling the intention to maintain the status quo a plan, that's about the extent to which I have one. There's a lot to be said for my status quo. I have the money and the time to simply have as much fun as a reasonable single adult should ever want. Of course, that's what most people think they want. A life of unending hedonism is a tempting prospect. This misses the idea that, just as all work and no play make Jack a dull boy, all play and no work make Jack a superficial boy. These plans I talk about that most people have is how one builds a life with substance. My outlet for substance is these writings. Hopefully, I'll write something that's funny, informative, enraging, or that otherwise impacts real people in a significant way.

There are a few plans that I am forming in my mind, but these are the sort of plans that do not connote ambition. They're things like vacations I want to take at a certain time each year, what kind of desserts I'd like to make at the holidays, articles I'd like to write, pipes I'd like to buy and that sort of thing. As a diabetic must enjoy desserts vicariously and so must I enjoy certain substantive elements of living vicariously. My friends are going to have their spouses, their kids, their careers, and everything that comes with most adult lives. Of course, I will be happy for them when these things go well and cry for them when they don't. In any event, the larger idea here to to try and become content with a life free of ambition. After all, life isn't short, as if often said. Life, to paraphrase Chris Rock, is long, especially if you don't have a lot going on in yours. So I'm going to try and be as happy as I can be with whatever remaining time I have left.

-Frank