Death to the Planner

I am a planner by nature so most everything that I do, I do in a well thought out manner with plenty of backup plans available in the case that something should go awry. In most cases this is a good thing but this also means that I over-think everything and tend to suppress the beauty of spontaneity. However, I like to think I am a planner in recovery because I am slowly starting to just learn to not plan everything out before. College has been great for me to learn how wonderful it is not to have every minute planned out, and this weekend was a case in point. After hearing the live bands on campus perform and doing a hall activity, my roommate and best friend and I were all sitting in my room bored. We started to brainstorm of what to do the next day when one of us decided that we should take a day trip. This idea grew and suddenly it was 1 in the morning and we had just booked a hotel room in Gatlinburg, TN. At first I was exhilarated with the prospect of leaving campus, but then my planner mode kicked in and my brain started thinking of all the bad things that would happen because we hadn't planned out our trip. What if the hotel didn't actually us a room and we had to sleep in the car?! What if we ended up getting taken hostage because we were three adorable, non-menacing girls traveling alone?! What if I had plans this weekend that I forgot about? What if, what if, what if....

All of these things were swirling around my head when we left early that morning (Did I mention how early it was? It was ungodly early). Eventually I fell asleep because it was dark outside and much like a small child, I fall asleep easily in any vehicle. When I woke up, we were in the mountains, much different scenery from the flat monotony of Indiana scenery. At first, I panicked and then little voice in my head reminded me that this far into the trip it was too late to turn back.So because I didn't have a choice, I went with it. I gave up control and just went along for the ride. 

And you know what?

I didn't die.

I didn't have to sleep in the car and didn't get taken hostage or miss any meetings.

My world didn't implode. 

This trip was one of the best things that I could have done because it showed me that sometimes spontaneity is a wonderful thing. It was whirlwind, about 12 hours of driving and about 10 hours of shopping crammed into a day, but it was worth it. It was so much fun to just spend time with my best friends and enjoy life. I've started to realize that I don't need to micromanage life because in the wise words of Sweet Brown, Ain't nobody got time for that!