Not Planning Everything Allows Me To Live in the Moment

I’m not big on planning things. I don’t really like to do it. I don’t think I’m that great at it. And I used to think this was a problem. That maybe there was something wrong with me — I just didn’t plan the way other people did and this was some failing of mine.

But it’s not a problem — it’s actually pretty great.

In our old house, we lived in an urban area. And instead of planning things for the weekend, we would just walk outside our door. In one direction there was a shopping area that had a weekend farmer’s market, a park, restaurants. A different direction led deeper into the neighborhood. Yet another direction would take us to the big park.

One of our favorite things to do on the weekend was walk our kids over to the ice cream shop. We usually stopped in the liquor store next store to see what new beers they had too.

When we moved, it was hard for me to explain what we would miss about this house and neighborhood. Missing the ice cream and liquor store didn’t make sense to other people.

I didn’t have the words yet to explain what I would miss — the sense of adventure that we got just from stepping outside our door.

We didn’t have to know what we were doing, we could just go out and explore. It was all there just outside our doorstep. If we were feeling really adventurous we could hop on a train and take our adventure even further. THAT was what we did on the weekends.

Now we live in a new neighborhood in a suburban area. We still have a lot of stores nearby, but walking there doesn’t have the same appeal. Instead, we walk around our neighborhood.

You’d think that’s not that adventurous, but we never know who we’re going to meet. Our adventures are different, but I would say they’re still adventures.

This is how we’ve made friends in our neighborhood — by walking out the door. When I see people walking by, I go out to say hi.

When we’re walking in the neighborhood, we talk to people. We stop to pet all the dogs. We ask questions. We stop by our friends’ houses.

I love this sense of adventure and the spontaneity we have. We walk out our door and we don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t have to know what we’re going to do every weekend. We can just live in the moment and see what happens.

That’s the fun of it — and it doesn’t come from planning.