Let me start this off by saying (or admitting rather) that I am a planner. I can’t help it. Really, truly, I can’t. I tend to freak out if things don’t go as planned and can get myself into quite a fit if someone else changes or impacts my plan. Any fellow planners will understand this, while other people probably just think I’m a crazy control freak.
Well, I didn’t exactly plan to be young single mother, working, while trying to finish my degree. I also didn’t plan to fall in love with a young single father who was working, while trying to get himself into his career path as well. I DID plan on having a family that I loved fiercely while also taking summer vacations, family photos, playing board games, and just generally living our perfect life. See what I did there? Yep, I actually tried to plan a perfect family. Talk about setting myself up for failure. I’m also pretty passionate about exploring different activities and interests for all of us – an idle mind is the devil’s workshop, right? That leaves us with a packed schedule. Add in our mixed schedules with the children and you’ve got yourself a nice mix batch of chaos. Like a good planner, I will wrack my brain, adjust, swap, plan our family days and, inevitably, something will come up that ultimately leads to a meltdown (whether it’s actually one of my kids, or me doing the melting, tends to be random!). This vicious cycle repeated itself more times than I’d care to admit and left me drained…and then one day I decided to listen to my Husband…Yeah, that does happen every so often! ;) See, my Husband happens to be the exact opposite of me in a lot of areas and let me tell you, it has been a breath of fresh air. He does not like to have a packed schedule and can truly enjoy a day of relaxation and just going with the flow. I always feel like we need to monopolize on the opportunity of whatever we are doing and MAKE THE MOST OUT OF IT. Isn’t that something right there? My end goal is always to relax and enjoy the moment but somehow I feel the need to force it and that simply doesn’t work. I stopped trying to force a happy moment and instead have decided to just stop and let the day or event transpire. A perfect example would be comparing two separate trips to Disneyland. In one, we got there as the park opened, we hit every activity we could, we made it to scheduled shows, and we left when the park closed. All of us were wiped out, cranky, and pretty miserable by the end of the day! On the other, we woke up (without an alarm) and had a nice breakfast, got to the park after that and then wrapped up around dinner time so we could eat off site and then went back to the hotel and swam a bit before bed. We had an amazing day and the kids still talk about that trip. I enjoyed myself the entire time. The same scenario has played out time and time again regardless of what the activity is. We've had great, quality moments doing the simplest of things if I stop trying to force it. It’s pretty amazing how much fun you can have in the flow. And, for all you fellow planners, you can always plan to not have a plan too!
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