I hate making plans!!  Training plans - okay.  It's part of my job and it makes life much easier.  But life plans, career plans, holiday plans - no.  I just don't like to.  And the longer the range, the less I like it.  It makes me uncomfortable.  I'll sketch out in great detail with dates and times, things that I want to do, that I know perfectly well I WILL do, but when the moment comes to fix the plan, I can't do it.  I'll leave it until the last possible moment.  Why exactly I don't know.  It's not that I don't like making decisions.  I'll happily make 100 decisions about the team every day.  And these are decisions that affect other peoples lives, which ought to be more difficult.  

I've come up with two theories.  The first one is that I'm petrified on missing out on something.  If I plan to do something and something else better comes up I will be annoyed for missing out.  This is completely illogical because I am reasonably certain that I have never missed anything that I would otherwise have preferred to do.  The second theory is that I'm petrified of not being able to do just whatever the hell I want!  There may be something in this.  It has been quite a while now that I have wandered around not having to consider others and doing what I want, when I want.  Whatever the actual reason, in the end it's irrelevant.  The fact remains that, to the occasional annoyance of my family and friends I don't like making plans.

BUT ... as a famous Dutchman once said 'Every advantage has a disadvantage and every disadvantage has an advantage'.

I especially don't like making plans for the end of the season.  Partly because I rarely know exactly when the season will end and partly because I always feel guilty for thinking about the the holidays while we are supposed to be in the most important period of the season.  But mostly because ... you know.

In fact this season, a central point of my contract negotiations was that I keep my apartment and car during the off season, hence removing the need for me to make any plans at all.  So a couple of weeks ago when I was having a conversation with a guy in the pub and I had the idea to go to the beach directly after the season, the thought didn't need to be an idle one.  I could.  Checking out a couple of travel agents, I decided on Crete, but didn't book because I didn't know exactly when we'd finish.  But really because ... you know.

Once we had finished, I went back to the travel agent, sat down, went through some brochures and the next thing I knew I was booked on a trip to Egypt.  Not what I was planning ... er, expecting, but there you have it.  

But as I alluded, my madness has one great advantage.  If at any moment in the last month (or indeed 10 years) I had actually sat down and made a plan I would never have spent this afternoon snorkelling off a coral reef on the Red Sea.  I just wouldn't have.  It would never have crossed my mind for more than a second.  If someone had mentioned it to me, I would have stopped for a second and thought 'that might be cool' but not more.  And I would have missed out.  I really couldn't even begin to describe it other than by saying it was exactly like the nature documentaries and photos you've seen.  All the colours that you've seen and marvelled at and secretly thought they are too preposterously bright and vivid and beautiful to really exist in nature, really do.  Who would have thought teal was a real colour!  I found myself lost in the scene and the moment which is something that happens to me even less frequently than planning.  And tomorrow I'm going to do it again.

And the disadvantage of not planning?  Organising your big summer holiday where there is beautiful, crystal clear ocean as far as the eye can see ... and no beach.

23rd April 2008