The Meta Plan

Nordic Boy and I are total planners. There is a part of me that wanted to deny or qualify this before I even finished typing the words. I don't want to sound stodgy. I don't think of myself as a Bert. I think of myself as an Ernie. And I do think that we are pretty good about not sticking to a plan when it's failing, or changing course when we need to. We're not married to our plans. But we do make them, commit to them, and pretty much always follow through on them. I guess we are pretty goal oriented in some ways, although again for some reason I feel embarrassed to say so. It's not the hippy/hipster thing to be, is it? I feel like I am Ben Stiller and Winona Ryder is just going to go off with that fuckface Ethan Hawke. And why the hell did she do that, you guys? Ethan Hawke was SUCH A DICK.

One thing we usually do in January is check up on all the plans we made the January before and check them off the list and talk about what plans we have for the new year and write out how we'll accomplish them. I realize I have been saying for so many years now that I am not a New Years Resolutions lady and so perhaps you are calling me a Full of Crap lady because it sounds like the same thing to you. To me, it seems different. Oh well. Anyway. We have a plan for our house- we have a huge master list of every last thing that we want to do on our house from now until the end of time- and we pick out the things that we think we can tackle for this year. Then we do a projected budget, and a timeline, and a supplies list. We also do a financial plan for the year. We set specific goals and then figure out what it will take to achieve them, and we write that shit out too. Then we make a vacation plan- any trips we need to take for the year? Where? How much vacation time will we need? How much money? Any personal goals for the year? A class one of us wants to take? An experience one of us wants to have? And then...

You get the picture. We plan.

In our defense (again, I am feeling the need to defend this), we don't just plan and put these things away until the next year. We check in with our plans throughout the year, see where we are, what needs attention. And as stick-in-the-mud as it sounds, at the end of the year, it feels SO FREAKING AWESOME when we look over all of those plans and see what we have accomplished. We have a yay us! grand old time every December. Because even if we didn't meet our goals exactly, we probably met part of them, and most of the time it's a big part. It's really motivating and empowering. And more than anything, I think it's a way for us to communicate about what we want out of our lives, what we are thinking about, what we are worried about, and what we can help each other with.

We were talking over one of our plans tonight (this one budgetary). We had gathered up some information and we were going over it and figuring out how to proceed this year. After we were done, he walked over to the kitchen to start dinner, which he did by first looking at our fridge to see the posted - wait for it- weekly meal plan.

Him: Wow, come to think of it, we have a lot of plans in our lives.

Me: I know, we really do.

Him: Let's think about what all part of our lives we have plans for.

Me: What, like just say them? In a list?

Him: Yeah.

Me: What for?

Him: So we can have a picture of our overall plan. What you plan for says a lot about your priorities in life. What you think is important.

Me: What do you mean our overall plan?

Him: Like, what do our many plans paint an overall picture of? When you put them all together, what does it say?

Me: That's deep, dude.

Him: Maybe we should think about the overall plan first, and then do the individual plans from that. Think about it philosophically before we get into the practical.

Me: I think I get what you're saying. Basically, you're saying what if we had a plan that will guide all of our plans.

(pause)

Him: I think I just tipped us right over into crazytown.

Me: Yeah.

Him: Forget I said anything.

Me: I plan to.