The unseen and beneficent celestial beings intervened.
I lost my planner.

Last week, I looked at my planner, sighed and began to micro-manage my existence. I had tests, I had projects, I had deadlines and most of all I had frustrations and anxieties. I was busy gearing up for the week of scourges, when I lost it. I was walking alone one quiet afternoon, nose down, eyes meditating on the planner book, my mind a cacophony of debates about the past, present and future. I looked at the Tower, wanting to scream at God. I was an angry, moody, dissatisfied person with too much to do. I did not scream at my Creator, but I definitely wanted to.

I went to a last-minute, hastily planned meeting for a project, whipped out the planner, penciled in tidbits of information and distinctly remember putting it back in my backpack. Once the meeting was over, I trudged back to my dorm, searched for my planner and it was gone. The next day I revisited the place I had last seen it last and went to a nearby lost and found. My planner, my chart for existence, my obligations were gone without a trace. My name and phone number were written inside. I waited for a phone call. Two weeks later I have not found my planner.

When I was a child I believed there was a black hole in my house. Things would get trapped in it—my blocks, my favorite doll, important papers, family heirlooms. Other family members have surrendered items to its whims. These things would just vanish one day, never to be recovered. I thought the black hole just existed in my house. Obviously, it has followed me to college. The black hole appropriates the things I do not necessarily need or I am fixated by. The Divine just seems to take them away, saying, “Kristin, that is enough now. Put it down.” A few days before my precious planner went astray, I commented to a friend, “I would be lost without this thing.” What is scary about this comment of mine is that I meant it in both good faith and jest.

I needed my planner to help me keep the day-to-day in check, to dodge deadlines and to function here. Yes, I need my planner, but I also learned I am more than the activities and obligations of the planner. I know who I am and what I want. I get anxious about that sometimes, because that entails a certain amount of responsibility for my own happiness. Because I have some newly found self-awareness, I am not lost, even if my planner is absent. Without the planner, I prefer to see myself as less rigid. I lied to myself when I said that I would be lost without it.

For a while it was liberating not to have it—to have absolutely no clue what I was obligated to be doing. I was not panicked. After all, I have a more general inventory of deadlines on my desk calendar. (I still have a safety net. I take risks, yes, but I am not an entirely free and uninhibited spirit.) I was almost relieved to have it taken away. I was not anesthetized on the unrealized finish line or the lost opportunity. I was fully and solely living in the present for a few invaluable hours.

I succumbed to my demons and purchased a new planner. I try not to look in it as much. After losing my first planner, I try to see the new schedule book as helpful, productive suggestions for achieving my many aspirations that are conveniently blocked out in sequences of time for me to accomplish. My planner is not full of mandates, but rather suggestions or proposals.

I also see my change of attitude as a type of transformation. With the old planner firmly within my grasp, I would not have had the opportunity to reflect and prioritize as I had done without it. I made decisions about my life’s goals, my needs and my self-fulfillment. I was free from noisy meetings and my own strident and omnipresent self-regulation. I had some free time to sit and think and more important, to be and feel. That may sound overly dramatic and it most likely is, but it is amazing what you can learn in the quiet—especially about yourself.

Send questions and comments to kristinrochelle@yahoo.com.