Making Plans

Christmas is a time for plans.  Every family has their little rituals—a certain critter to put on top of the tree, a way to hang the stockings, a planned lunch and shopping afternoon.  Sometimes the traditions don’t really make sense, but people are happier if everything is as it was before.

I’ve been learning recently that I, too, am happier if I have a routine, a day-to-day plan for what I’m going to do.  I’m healthier, too—can’t forget to eat breakfast or brush my teeth every morning if it’s on my schedule, can I?  But when it comes to big plans, like where I will be next summer or where I’m going to go after graduation, I haven’t got a clue.  And I kind of like it that way.

All my life I’ve had plans.  For most of it they were other people’s plans for me.  Every year I went through school because my parents and the government said I had to.  My parents chose vacations for me, or else my teachers organized them.  After high school graduation, I had my own plans to work on: go to college, study abroad for a semester, polish up my writing and my music.  Now, however, I’m climbing up the diving board and beginning to see the big empty space out there.  There’s just five more months for me, and after that—after May 20^th, 2012, to be precise—my life is one big blank.

It’s terrifying, yes.  But when I was a kid, I always loved diving: the quick twitch of your heart as you make the jump—the way your body feels in midair—even the cold shock of the water around your head.  It was my favorite thing about swimming, and I would do it again and again.

The thing is, I see that huge emptiness as opportunity.  I can do anything: apply for a job at a resort, plan a road trip across the country, go skydiving and bungee jumping and parasailing.  I could go anywhere—Los Angeles, London, Paris, or Abu Dabi.  There are probably places I shouldn’t go, things I shouldn’t do, but the fact is that I can do them anyway if the fancy suits me.  The world is my snowglobe, and it’s time to shake it up a little bit.  It’s time to not have plans, to make mistakes and correct them, and to find out what it is I really want to do.  And I’m telling you, I can’t wait to make the dive.