Last Updated on December 6, 2023 by The Smetz Files
In August of 2013 my husband, Jay, had a minor outpatient procedure and while we waited in the recovery suite of the surgery center we talked through a five year plan and captured the highlights in the notes section on our phones.
A seemingly innocuous way to pass the time, we included previously discussed goals such as adding to our family (baby 2 was born 10 months later, so mark that as a success), professional growth (he was in the midst of pursuing his MBA), and exploring options for our dream home.
Ironically, most of what we listed came to fruition, perhaps because we were already working towards enacting some of those goals, or was it naming our dreams that gave them life and we worked together to achieve the plan? Regardless, by 2018 our first born was on his way to Kindergarten and much of what we worked for had in fact, come to pass.
Pivoting
One thing we didn’t have on the five year plan was a major medical event. In 2015, Jay, a former athlete and otherwise healthy 30 year old suffered a series of strokes that shifted our focus and forced us to realign our priorities. As the parents of toddlers, only one and three years old at the time, our dream house plan was put on hold.
We opted to buy a fixer upper, a home to rehab while our young family worked through his health recovery. In that time of downsize and regrouping I decided to return to graduate school as a full-time PhD student. In the midst of the five year plan, we experienced more change and transition than we bargained for.
However, the fundamentals of the plan remained: we grew our family, we both developed professionally, and we kept our family’s health a priority.
What are you working towards?
I’ve kept that original plan from 2013 in my phone. Here we are, nearly ten years later, and I like to think back on that day we innocently captured our thoughts and all the times since that we’ve revisited, revised, and reformulated ‘the plan’. What are you working towards? How have you pivoted when the plans changed unexpectedly?
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