How Not To Plan

By Cheryl Oreglia

They say the most productive artists have a plan in mind when they get down to work. The word plan is either a noun, meaning you have a detailed proposal or it’s a verb, as in something you decide on and arrange in advance. 

As it turns out I’ve been treating it as an adjective as if it could modify my time. 

See I’m newly retired and it’s not going well. This week I would have launched my first classes, I would be memorizing my student’s names with a series of flashcards for each block, and we would be full-on planning (there’s that word again) our curriculum for the entire semester. The idea is to plan for the topics we hope to explore but leave the flow of the class open to the myriad of possibilities. Sometimes we have to throw out the plans even though they are indispensable.

This annual pattern has been with me for so long it sort of inspires everything else. That would include keeping my personal calendar up to date with notations as to when my blogs are due, weekends at the lake, dentist appointments, birthdays, social commitments to friends and family, etc. 

I’m in total disarray.

I can’t remember what day it is let alone the date or time. I’m confused about how food gets into the house and ends up as a meal. I’m regularly shocked we have a female vice president, each time she appears on the news it’s as if I’m finding it out anew. I have no alarm clock set. That’s probably the most disturbing part of it all. 

I’m waking up in a fog each day trying to figure out who I am? Talk about the walking dead.

Okay, that was the longest explanation ever for missing my blog schedule this week. I apologize for the delay in our schedule. Now, in my defense, there’s a fine line between good planning and over planning and I haven’t navigated that well. As Twyla Tharp warns, we don’t want all the planning to inhibit the natural evolution of our work, or life in my circumstance. 

So I took a little dive into Tharp’s ideas around planning. She says a plan is like the scaffolding around a building. When you’re putting up the exterior shell, the scaffolding is vital. But once the shell is in place and you start work on the interior, the scaffolding disappears. That’s how she thinks of planning. 

I forgot the scaffolding. 

This is sort of a paradox, in order to be habitually creative, as in a member of a blogging group, you have to know how to prepare to be creative, but of course, that’s not a guarantee of success, because it’s only after you let go of your plans that you can breathe life into your efforts, says Tharp.  

In my old life, I had every other day off, those were my writing days, rain or shine, that computer would be open on my lap, flanked by a cup of steaming hot coffee no more than six inches away from my right hand. The thing is I had a plan as if someone said between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. if you’re working something good will happen. 

And it always did. A blog would appear.

Woody Allen said that eighty percent of success is showing up. So I need some new scaffolding that can accommodate a restructured life, one that allows for unexpected delays, multiple exits, and maybe a little color because this project is going to take some time. I say plan to a point because without leaps of imagination, space to dream, we lose the possibility of the unexpected and that makes all the difference in writing. 

As a reminder scaffolding is only temporary.

So I will be updating my calendar with scheduling reminders and I’ll be setting aside specific time to put my butt in a chair and write but I’m leaving the subject or topic open so as to allow for a little magic. That’s how I plan not to plan. 

The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed says, William Gibson. Bahaha.

When I'm not writing for Across the Board, I'm Living in the Gap, drop by any time.

What are your planning tips?