I’ve learned through the past year that there really is no way to actually plan what is going to happen in life. Now, to be clear, I was never under the impression that I could magically wish for a few stacks of 20’s to appear under my pillow, nor was I even inclined to think that the 3rd scratcher must be the winner. I have always taken to life as though it were a journey that didn’t have a clear end, but had definitive points on the way I would really like to stop at. It’s like a family car trip across the country - you’re forced to drive from Los Angeles to New York, making pit stops that you may or may not want to see on the way there. I would have preferred to make every pit stop that I was planning on seeing, but sometimes the traffic is heavy or construction is blocking the only direction you can take. This is how I have attempted to view my life, but for 2009 I had high expectations - probably higher than I should have allowed them to be. They journey through ‘09 was a gigantic adventure that didn’t really lead to a gigantic finish, but I guess the way to look at it now is that the bar is set pretty low for 2010 to be a flourishing year of twice the happiness and half the heartbreak.

I had a distinct plan - one that was so far developed and so unbelievably seamless that it seemed to have been constructed by the Gods - for the events of 2009. This was problem number one. I hadn’t realized that I had put all of my eggs in one basket - though I did leave a few on the side in case some broke. I have become increasingly cautious about putting too much hope into any one thing, so I have generally let enough hope in to enjoy myself and not be riddled with uneasiness about it’s breakdown, but have kept my conscious clear about what could and may happen to derail my master plan. Yet, coming out of the dream world of Japan and entering my new dream world of spending equal amounts of time in America, airplanes, and most other foreign countries on people’s eventual to-do list, I found that I was living a continual dream, that was dipped in reality. It was real life - working as though it was two alternate lives functioning independently - and I was unmistakably happy with each of them as they grew and developed. Unfortunately for me, there was always a roadblock coming up. There was a fork in the road that was the beginning or end of my current situation. It was the orange you begin to pull out at the grocery store, but know that there is a real good chance of the 12 other oranges sitting above it will lose their balance and tumble down creating both a mess and a huge scene in aisle 17. I gave it a shot in every way I could, and waited for months as the situation adjusted itself, constantly worrying about what was to come and what will happen. The day came where I found that the single most important aspect of my master plan had officially failed me. Now it was time to start building master plan B, but I had to remember exactly what I did wrong with master plan A.

The lesson to be learned here is that I was in the habit of making a singular plan. I was so caught up in the high of living my fantasy that I had forgotten about the real world. I would make occasional visits to my workplace, giving a few dedicated weeks here and there, before eventually drifting back to the place I began to feel more connected to with every stamp of my passport, but I had finally seen that the passport stamping and baguette buying and money exchanging ways I had grown increasingly accustomed to were going to make a sudden halt in just a few months time. I should have begun preparing to lose everything I had thought I had a chance to keep - as losing it didn’t seem like a viable option - but I didn’t. I prepared for what would be the make or break - as though I saw it. I still had a chance to maintain some form of the original master plan. I was blinded by an emotion that is so commonly blinding. I was finding myself to be more and more susceptible to feeling as though everything really was going according to some plan I hadn’t expected - a plan “A and a half” if you will. I still had a strong will and hope that mirrored the will of a pet chasing a laser pointer - an unstoppable urge to catch something that is unreachable. Though my attempts at maintaining some form of regularity - the kind adjacent to Activia, though for my mind not my bowels - seemed to have a positive response, the eventual demise of plan B proved to me that my overplanning and underpreparing are two characteristics that should be mutilated with a red pen. Edit here; rethink here. I needed to fully understand exactly what I needed to change and how I needed to change it.

Since plan B, I have found something new to focus on. I am open-minded and open-ended for the next phase of my life. I have learned, through rigorous trials and Survivor-like quests, that I need to see my life as malleable. It needs to have the ability to morph at the drop of a hat and be ready for the changes that may or may not come. I have discovered that you can live a parallel dream world, just as long as the real world you want to escape is always moving at the same rate and that you’re involvement in both is equal. I am going into 2010 with the ability to hope for the future, be ready for what happens, and know that no matter where I happen to end up this year, I will always be part of the master plan that knows no beginning and end. My life is one big master plan, and the small speed bumps and road blocks that occur along the way are there to assist me in seeing that though there may be situations I could live without, those situations are the variables that truly shape your life into the eventual finished masterpiece that is the result of life - more commonly referred to as The Master Plan.

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