Planning

One thing I'm undeniably into is planning ahead and I'm talking preparation for events that are years in the future with plenty of factors that may prevent them from happening in the first place. Whether or not this has anything to do with being autistic, I don't know, but it definitely has everything to do with being me. In the past, this has applied to things as outlandish as planning for weddings and naming children I planned to have with women to whom I had not even yet proposed, designing a huge corporate headquarters for my ultimately failed startup business, and designing my own million-dollar mansion. While this tendency of mine has by no means subsided, these days it seems to be focused on significantly more reasonable goals. Most of the time, this means occasion cakes I plan to order, Christmas gifts I plan to buy or make, or vacations or other purchases which I plan to make. It is the last category that signifies the largest ways in which recent events have changed my perspective on what is important and what course I may expect my life to me. No longer do I plan based on relationships that will never pan out or careers that are ultimately doomed to failure. Instead, I plan on what will make me happy today and what ways of spending my money will be wisest.

The most expensive of the things for which I am planning are a couple of upcoming vacations, a 1,200 square-foot slate tile floor, and a new car. All that covers the major investments I'll be making for the next give years. One of the important things that separates these things from things for which I have planned before is that they all depend upon the current status quo instead of possible, expected, and, ultimately, hypothetical events that may or may not ever actually occur. Another important difference is that these all have meaningful or important reasons behind them. Disney will be an important chance to reminisce about my grandmother and try to rekindle a certain joy within myself that depression seems to have extinguished. Vegas will be important because it'll be the most people I've ever gone on vacation with at once as an adult and it really promises to have the feel of a, "guys hitting the road," kinda road trip. A new slate tile floor will be helpful to my allergies and will happen after the carpet is 15 years old and needs to be replaced anyway, not to mention the value a nice stone floor will add to home. Another Ford Escape is just responsible planning because my current one will be eight years old by then, which is about as long as you should let American cars go.

I suppose another thing that is informing a lot of my plans lately is living for today. We often hear that one should live for today. A popular internet version goes something like the following: Those who are depressed are living in the past, those who are anxious are living in the future, and those who are content are living in the present. Well, I'm certainly not content, and I'm medicated for my anxiety, so I suppose I'm not living in the present or the future too much. Depression is clearly not managed by medication alone, as my anxiety is, so it would stand to reason that I am, in fact, living in the past. However, I think that that is mostly about how I'm looking to my past, especially my recent past, to try and gain some sort of insight as to how I should regard my future. Recent events, teaching me, as they did, about my professional and romantic limitations allowed for a certain stability. One of the things letting go of potential and ambition grants you is knowing that your life is unlikely to vary much from year to year. Where you live now is where you're gonna live years from now, your financial circumstances now are likely to be the same years from now, and your needs as a single person are likely to be the same now as they will be years from now.

-Frank