When life interrupts the plan
Maybe consistency isn’t an unbroken streak. Maybe it’s the willingness to return.
I had something else planned for today.
Actually, I’ve had quite a few things planned lately.
A few weeks ago, I told you I was going to start showing up on video more. I had ideas. I had scripts. A content calendar, even. Color-coded if I’m being honest.
Then life did what life does.
Not in a dramatic, everything-has-changed kind of way. Just in the very ordinary way life happens when you’re living in the middle of what I call…the three-generation juggle.
The kind of juggle where I start my day, before the coffee is even done brewing, researching lightweight walkers my aunt can easily fold because hers was lost during a recent, unexpected trip to the hospital. Next, I'm on the phone with my sister sorting out that and six other details, while getting dressed and packing my camera gear, triple-checking every setting because I'm shooting a Thanksgiving spread for a client and this is not the shoot I want to mess up.
After the shoot, I rush home to cull, edit, and export so the images are ready for the client's newsletter the next morning. Then it's off to the airport to pick up my college-aged son who’s been out of the country for the summer. A major freeway is closed so the drive takes twice as long. On the way home, I realize I forgot about dinner. Frozen pizza it is. "Welcome home, pal!"
My daughter stops by to see her brother and drop off supplies for the grandkitties I'm watching this week. And just as I climb into bed, I remember I never answered my stepmom about dinner tomorrow, so I send her a quick text.
Eyes closed, I replay the day and notice that once again, I didn't make it to the gym. And I didn't post the video.
If someone had asked me that morning what I had planned for the day, I would have said, "Oh, nothing much." Because how do you even begin to explain a day like that?
At my recent high school reunion, this topic came up over and over. So many of us are trying to be there for the generation above us and the generation below us, while somehow tending to our own lives in the middle. Some of you are even managing a four-generation juggle. You know how quickly a carefully planned week can turn into a pinball machine: one minute you're rolling smoothly down the middle, the next, one of those little hammers has smacked you sideways.
This is the part of “beginning again” that I’m learning to understand differently.
I used to think consistency meant continuing without interruption. Make the plan. Follow the plan. Build momentum. Don’t break the streak. But perhaps real consistency isn’t an unbroken streak.
Perhaps it’s returning.
Returning after the family emergency, the freeway closure, the frozen-pizza dinner, or the week that asked more of you than you had available to give. Returning without deciding that one interruption means you’ve failed.
Because when I look back at that day, my aunt will have a walker. My son is home. My client had her photographs on time. The grandkitties were fed. That isn't "nothing much." That's a full, loving day. It just didn't include the video plans I'd made for myself.
And I'm still here on Sunday morning, keeping this small promise to myself and to you.
Sometimes life asks us to set down our plans for a little while and give our attention to the people who need us. And then, when we can, we pick those plans back up.
Not from the beginning. Not having lost everything. Just from wherever we happen to be standing now.
So if something you meant to do fell by the wayside this week, perhaps your next step isn’t to create a bigger plan or try to make up for lost time.
Perhaps it is simply to return to one small thing that matters to you.
That’s what I’m doing today. What’s your one small thing?
“Good, Carrie. You made it through that.
Begin again.”
Cheers,
Carrie
The more life I live, the more I understand how precious our time is. What even a few minutes is worth. It doesn't go unnoticed that you spend some of your day here with me. Thank you for letting me be a small part of it. I hope you always leave with something meaningful.🤍