Making Plans

I am great at making plans. I live many times more in my planning than I ever could if I stayed firmly planted in reality. My mind gets all fired up over things. I often can not sleep at night because my mind will not shut down.

If my husband says, "I'd like to apply for _____ position in Michigan, what do you think?" He gets more than an "okay honey, let's do it." My mind starts wondering what it would be like living in Michigan. (I was born and raised in Iowa and lived a few years in Minnesota, so imagining Michigan is not that hard.) I get out an atlas and start scoping out the layout of the state and getting familiar with different cities and towns. I do google searches, mapquest exploration and anything else I can think up. I then go on to Realtor.com and see what is available in different towns and what housing prices are in different areas. By the time a week has passed, I have lived in different towns in Michigan in my mind.

Now, if different family members, myself included, have a new idea on something, there I go, off into my mental reality and I experience new adventures by researching, imagining and ??? Every time I think we have a plan of action in some direction or another, I get all geared up for it to become our new actual reality. Life then seems to take us in a different direction and I find that what I thought would be, has now ended and something else is laid out before me.

This used to bother me for a while. Now, I enjoy it. I have seen, in my mind's eye, many experiences that I may never actually live through. My life is rarely boring and I have few regrets. It is much like reading. You get to visit many places or share in someone else's life through a story. It is fun, exciting, sometimes scary and once in a while a bit boring. Either way, I have enjoyed the overall experience.

Does anyone else out there experience such planning and extra curricular living? Surely I can not be the sole adventurer of such things. I'd love to hear your story.