Spontaneous Post!

I was reading an old post from one of my friends (I had many inspirations from her blog- it was epic) and she was discussing (OMG, I write "discussing" in just about every other sentence in my progress notes and now every time I type it outside of a progress note, my skin crawls) how she is trying to incorporate more spontaneity in her life.

Let's have a moment where we consider the irony of planning less planning in future plans... boom.

So, I'm reading this thinking, "How does one NOT plan?" It seems to go against every part of my being. I mean, I have flashbacks to all the moments I have encouraged my clients in some way to PLAN something for their future. And here I am trying to not plan.

Kid you not, my first thought in wrapping my mind around the concept of not planning was "I would have to plan..." And I caught myself. Honestly, how do you plan to not plan while coordinating with other people's plans? (Anybody else thinking of that scene in the Dark Knight when the Joker is saying how bad things happen in society and it's OK as long as it's part of the plan?) Like, for the last few months I have been pouring myself into my "plans" (wow, let's DISCUSS how old that word is getting...) for living in and sprucing up my parents' basement. I mean, if we truly took the opportunity to explore why I'm developing all these artsy fartsy ideas for a living area I will only be in temporarily, we would find that this is helping me reduce the anxiety I have about this endeavor while feeding my feelings of competency and allowing me to be distracted from other work I could be engaging in... but let's not get into that.

Actually, let's... kind of... not directly because I don't know if I'm ready to put that on a blog and make it a whole new level of "official". Planning does so much for us. It's not just "I have items A through X to do and I'm going to have to physically pencil it all into a calendar or else it ain't happening." Yes, I said A through X instead of Z, it was spontaneous, get with it. In your planning, you can totally forget why the fuck you're doing A through X.

So let's explore (not discuss!) this deal with the basement, since I already brought it up. That's right, people, we're going to directly address it- if you didn't see that coming, you did not read the title of the post. I want to move back to my parent's house. I have advertised that my motivation is to save money and the more I dream about the hypothetical money I will be saving, I drool a little bit. Of course, if we factor in the tuition loan payments coming up, it will probably only be a fraction of that but I'm still in grad school so we're going to continue to float the delusion of I will work out that hefty bill at a later date. I've been offered by a few people to come live with them (again, we will ignore the fact that I find these people wonderful and delusional for wanting to live with ME) and while I have given all of these prospects great thought, the dream dissipates and I'm still looking at trying to live with my parents. And then I start to consider why the hell I'm trying to swing this. A year ago, as I was making this plan most official, I literally had a panic attack. Living in a cardboard box was looking preferable. And yet, I find myself burrowing deeper into my plans. It honestly makes no sense.

And it's dawned on me that I'm probably just trying to prove something to myself. Instead of accepting the fact that I may be a competent family therapist, I am pushing myself to the ultimate test- negotiating life with my own family. I don't know if this is the actual reason- I really need to get on that personal therapy train. But as I have spontaneously forced myself to recklessly delve into my psyche, without planning it, I've recognized that my DIY To Do list consists of mental gymnastics to avoid all the cognitive garbage behind my endeavors (and my brain is going for the fucking gold on this one).

But my instincts pull me back into my plans to "be where you are". I have to cut my spending and save considerable money before I totally charge out into the world and all these plans may ultimately help make the basement my own and something that helps me own the situation- to be where I am and embrace the situation for what it is.

I'm aiming for nature and sophisticated ridiculousness.

Seriously though, that basement is going to be fly.