Best Laid Plans

I'm one of those people who enjoys life most at a leisurely enough pace to leave room for breathing deeply of the roses or drinking in the beauty of a sunset as I contemplate life. When things get too chaotic or cluttered to partake in these simple pleasures, my whole world starts to feel unbalanced. The chaos of the move and getting settled in, combined with too many work deadlines piled up all at once, has been a bit like that in recent weeks. It's been hard enough sometimes to just enjoy life, let alone make space to actually create on this blank canvas of our fresh start here.

So imagine my joy when I finally got a breather last week. The massive changes of our new life have slowed down, I put all work deadlines behind me, and I took a couple days to renew and catch up in my internal world. I had time to relish simply being. I was even able recapture the excitement and begin working on plans once again for a new coaching project I am hoping to launch soon.

Just when everything seemed a "go"...wham! I catch the cold the boys brought home from their friends. I figure a couple days of sore throat and sniffles...no big deal, right? Well, the better part of a week later, it still won't let go. It hurts to breathe. I can't talk for long without it setting off another fit of coughing. And now I have more work piling up and never did get around to making those connections that would have set the coaching project in motion. It doesn't seem fair!

That's just life though, isn't it! We can plan carefully and make the most of what we have. But those things still creep up beyond our control that upset all our best laid plans. I can rail against the injustice of it all, but it won't change the fact that I caught the cold and it still isn't gone. I can't change the fact that there are always more activities waiting to fill my schedule and more deadlines looming ahead. Nor can I change the values and personal characteristics about me that mean life is best lived at a relaxed enough pace to really savor every morsel.

So as I face a new week wondering when I'll feel 100% again and when I'll have the luxury of another week free from that obligatory "to-do" list, I realize I must shift my focus away from regretting what I wanted the week to be. Instead, I find myself asking what safeguards I can put in place even in the busiest of times to protect that simplicity of life I crave. And how can I restructure the way I'm doing life right now to make sure those things like the coaching project don't wind up completely neglected in the midst of the tyranny of deadlines or a cold that won't let go.