Simpler times probably meant that the average person wasn’t surrounded by calendars and planners at every turn of a corner.  I’d like to think so at any rate.  There were no refrigerators and smart phones to display every moment of every day or jingle at us with a warning that we’re supposed to be somewhere for something in 30 minutes time.

Days used to seem longer and getting through an entire year too forever!  At least that was the case until I got into my 20’s, which are not all the far away.  Suddenly, it was as if adulthood plunged me into a wormhole and time sped past in a blur and before I knew it, and despite all the memories I made along the way, I now find myself looking in the mirror on many a morning, giggling at the grey hairs that seemingly appeared overnight.  As often as my hair stylist suggest it’s time for another round of balayage, I continue to put off coloring my hair out of curiosity for what is going to happen next.  I am hoping I’ll get a shock of white right at my widow’s peak and it will stay that way for decades to come.  The Fates are probably laughing at this thought and purposefully going to intersperse my crowning glory with greys here-and-there until I give up on the wished for shock of white and dye my hair purely out of frustration.  And perhaps a little vanity, too.

But, like my hair and my hopes for it’ll change as I age, Life’s best laid plans don’t always go as we envision.  Even today’s post, though I’d hoped to have something written and posted in the morning, were waylaid by an outage of the internet service.  Once the service had gotten back up and running, writing plans were usurped once more by running errands which led to pulling laundry off the clothesline once we got home due to storm clouds.  And that left me here, at the dining table with my college-ruled notebook and InkJoy pen, chicken scratching a post in the late afternoon.

Yet, when I look up from the page, my future plans literally lie strewn about me.  Cookbooks are lying open to recipes for the week ahead; thin, little post-its marking the pages just in case.  A small notepad has a checklist for an upcoming camping trip and my phone, the electronic keeper of my life, lays atop it so I can add “To Do” reminders and grocery items to ever-growing lists.  Magazines like Madison and The Sun are stacked, waiting for me to pick them up and resume reading where I left off; and my hard copy planner, in case my phone breaks, peeks at me from my satchel slung over the back of a dining chair.  I am surrounded by my life’s plans in nearly all their immediate forms.

Yet, these plans are never concrete or unchangeable until they have actually been completed.  Tonight’s dinner menu may still change.  Thursday’s dance lessons may fall through.  Today’s blog post may not get published (though if you’re reading it… it did).

There are phrases galore to make us feel better when what we planned becomes what we didn’t do. Sometimes, however, I think The Fates have a different path in mind for us and it usually ends up being better and more exciting than where we were headed in the first place.

Have you recently had a change in your best laid plans?  What were they and what happened?