Guest Contributor: Stephen Gosewich, Dad blogger

I seem to be hearing this word used a lot these days.

Plans.

Plans for the future, plans for the day, plans for my career, plans for investment….plans for dinner!

Everyone seems to want things organized and pre-determined so that when the future becomes present,
everything should be taken care of.

Who can blame them? No one likes a curve ball thrown at them. Think about it.

You make plans for dinner only to have them cancelled at the eleventh hour. I remember when my wife and I first
got married, we liked to entertain a lot. Many people took us out to celebrateour engagement so once we got married, we owed a lot of dinners to all those people who treated us so nicely. One particular event sticks in my mind. We invited a couple over for dinner. We went food shopping earlier in the day and planned our whole menu for the evening. It was going to be great. With all the
food prepared and cooking in the oven, we received a phone call a half an hour before our friends were to arrive, to be told that the couple would not be coming to our house because they had just decided that they were going to end their marriage and get divorced.

Curve ball.

My wife and I were in an apartment when we first got married for about 4-5 years. Back in those days, it wasn’t assumed that you would buy a house the day after you got married. Nowadays, things are different. We found a house that we liked and decided to take the
plunge because we knew that we wanted to start a family and our apartment would have been a bit too small to live in with a newborn. So, we moved in and planned to stay for about 5 years before we would want to move into something a bit bigger. Fifteen years later, we are still in the house we originally bought and have no plans to move.

Curve ball.

Think about all the plans you have made in your life only to see them fall off the rails when something comes along, unexpectedly and you have to try and re-group to come up with a new plan.

Life does that. No matter how hard you try to plan for the future, the realty is that the future is an unknown. Many things can suddenly change taking you off of your plan.

Having some kind of a plan is a good thing. I am certainly not advocating for a life that just bumps around aimlessly like the ball in a pinball machine. Establishing plans for the biggest of events (like saving for your retirement) or plans for the smallest events (what’s for dinner) is something we should all aspire to. However, we must do so recognizing that many times our plans need to be adjusted. My daughter might decide to not come home for dinner and instead go to a friend’s house. Or, especially nowadays, you might lose your job and be forced to live off of savings, taking you off your plan for setting aside money for the future.

That is the craziness of life. It is virtually impossible to predict the future. Many people get paid big bucks to anticipate and predict what the future might hold for us. Many Americans are relying on these people to help predict how they will fare as their country continues to be buried in an ocean of debt.

But, even all the highest paid, best educated professionals will never be able to totally figure out the future. They can plan for all kinds of scenarios…so that if they are thrown a curve ball, they will have a Plan B. Plan as they might, these people are really just giving it their best educated guess and doing so with their fingers crossed.

I had a plan to write this blog on Monday…but Monday night came around and I caught a stomach bug and spent the night in another room of the house (enough said). I waited a few days and started to feel better and am now writing my blog today (two days later).

There was a change in plans. That’s what happens in life.

Stephen Gosewich is an aspiring enlightened male. He spends his weekdays as a commercial real estate professional, and all other times just hanging out with his wonderfully supportive wife and two very active and inspiring daughters. He loves spinning, yoga and blogging. Visit www.theenlightenedmale.wordpress.com to read more of his blogs.