The five year plan

I’ve heard about these for decades. Which is to say that several five year segments have passed without me having formulated one. I do still remember writing in a journal that I needed to have a novel published before I was thirty, a move I now consider a curse.

But recently I’ve had some forward momentum in my life. We moved a year ago to a big old house up the street from our even older first house with crooked floors. That one is still for sale in a sad economy.  The kids are finally both in the same elementary school. I finished a novel, which is also for sale. We got a dog. In the face of such activity, I thought maybe I ought to try again.

About a half hour into it, I could see why I’d never completed one. Unlike in a novel,  the plot of life is unbearably slow. This is especially true for late bloomers like me. I mean, I majored in English twenty years ago but I only this summer figured out how to count iambic pentameter. Still, the day began quite well, with me at my desk, coffee in hand by nine. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t going well. My coffee was gone and I’d gathered every pen I own in front of me. None of them were right. I grabbed my keys and set out for the northern edge of town, home of the box stores. I returned several hours later with a set of desktop drawers, because  I needed a place to put the thing, and two dozen new Sharpies, in a variety of colors, some in very-fine-point, some in standard-point. I had also purchased an eighteen by twenty-four inch sketch pad of heavy paper. If you’re going to map out your life, might as well  do it big.

By noon I was mid-way through the instruction manual on my three-drawer pack, complete with brushed silver handles with a little label holder on each. The project involved about 37 small screws and several pieces of MDF with pre-drilled holes.

I ate lunch.

I finished the drawers, chose my colors and sat down to make the list. It was 1:30. This was a Friday, which meant school was out at two-ten. I had forty minutes and I was totally blank for ten of them. Extremely self-conscious, relieved to have only the dog as a witness, I decided to conduct an interview with myself. Using, of course, two different colors of ink. Pink was my life coach. A life coach. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? She asked me things like, Where do you see yourself in five years?

Blue was me. I answered: “Do you mean realistically, or as in, a fantasy five years? Because really, I could fill a poster board with fantasy—”

Just answer it as though you’re looking through a window at yourself, and here is what you’d like to see. Hope, the pink ink said. Identify what you want.

There was a pause while I considered this. I may not get what I want. That was the crux of the matter. That explained the years of avoiding this kind of thing, not to mention the last several hours of mindless, demoralizing retail therapy. You put down what you want to achieve and you run the risk of not achieving it. Failing.

True enough. Yet is it not also true that by not identifying what you want, you guarantee you won’t get it?  I mean, it’s not really an I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it kind of affair at this point, is it?

Blue ink spoke up. “So, you can’t win,” I wrote, “If you don’t play.”

Exactly.

Once we got past that, the thing took me all of ten minutes. It was empowering, electrifying, all the things you hear about this sort of thing. And if you think I’m going to set it down right here, uh, you’ve got me confused with some other blogger.