We took the whole day off for our anniversary. We had plenty of ideas for what to do with it.
At one point, we were considering a private chauffeur so we could go to bingo and meat raffles without figuring out the driving. I also wanted to work in the bar where we had our first date, which meant looking at event times and figuring out how everything might fit together.
We made more than one booking.
Then the day came, we ran out of time or energy for going out, and we stayed home.
I can’t tell you exactly where the switch happened between making plans and not wanting to do them anymore. I just know that we’d taken a day off and made actual reservations for our anniversary, and then we canceled them.
Well, almost all of them.
I’d completely forgotten about one booking until a reminder email showed up. I canceled it in time. We canceled the other one in time, too, so we didn’t lose any money.
Without that email, I could’ve paid for something we weren’t even going to do.
This isn’t the first time I’ve made a much more ambitious plan than I ended up following. I once planned a 16-day road trip with 17 reservations and kept five of them. I even changed an ATV tour to a pool day myself. I wrote about that in Why Can I Plan the Whole Thing and Still Not Follow the Plan?.
Our anniversary had a slightly different ending. On the road trip, we were at least out there doing things, just not all the things I’d planned. This time, the plan involved taking a day off, making reservations, staying home, and making sure we weren’t charged for the reservations.
If your plans keep falling apart between the fun version in your head and the day itself, start with The planner failed. Again.
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