SquarePeg Books

I like to plan (EXCEPT for plotting my stories- I’m a total pantser with that). I make plans and when they blow up, I still have the goal. I still have the deadline. I can work around the inconvenience that has popped up. Maybe not in the way that I want, but I can STILL DO THE THING THAT MATTERS MOST. There’s the plan, there’s the back-up plan, the contingency plan, the back-up to the contingency plan….

Until planning doesn’t mean shit.

Then I get discombobulated.

I disconnect in a way that’s odd.

I can sit and do nothing very well. I feel guilty as hell about it, but I can do it. I do it more often than I like to admit.

I make lists so that I will NOT do nothing, but when I disconnect, the list doesn’t mean much.

I suppose we could call it a blue-screen. The lights are on, the electricity is running, but damn.

Absolutely nothing is working in the noggin, right now.

When my husband had a stroke a few years back, there wasn’t a plan, but there was a list; a daily list of things that had to get done. Check this box, cross through that item, dot these i’s, cross those t’s. Not a plan, really, but not a blue-screen, either. And I got through it. We got through it. And we moved on.

There is no list for this current, incoming, crisis. There is only waiting. Watching it come closer, waiting for it to arrive. Knowing you could be doing something, anything, even just picking your nose, but you don’t. You can’t bring yourself to invest time or effort in anything but the most basic tasks.

You blue-screen.

Waiting for someone else to tell me what the goals are. What are the priorities. What’s the schedule. Where can I bend? Where’s the flex point? What do I drop entirely? What do I pick up? Does that t need to be crossed now, or can I come back to it later? How many i’s absolutely must be dotted for the task to be completed?

I can improvise in the moment. But I’m not in the moment.

I have to wait for the moment. Not because I want to.

But because I have to.

I have minimal data.

Not enough to plan with.

Only enough to know that flexibility is going to be necessary.