Changing Paths While Staying on Course

Plans. I consider myself a planner. Full on. I like to put everything in my Google calendar to the minute. When I launched my Year on Other Things, I bought butcher paper to make big visual lists of all the things I need to do; I have to give credit to my sister-in-law, Meredith Hicks, for inspiring me to bring butcher paper into my personal life. Before deciding to quit my job, I made a Google doc titled, "quitting my job," with a complete run-down of how I would get health insurance, what professional projects I could stay involved in and what personal projects I could expand to. The list is two pages long and during the last two months since quitting my job, I have referenced it maybe once.

But, that is just it. The plan is not the action. There is a reason that it is so impossible to follow a plan precisely. When you plan, you are setting out the intention of what you would like to do. If while you are doing, you are constantly looking at the plan, you are probably not following it and you are probably not achieving its goals. For example, when I would plan for a session with my students, if I followed it step by step, the goal of fully engaging student voice would be lost as I would not be looking around me and responding to the needs of the students in that moment.

I used to think the points of plans were to map out your exact course, now I am beginning to see that they are something else. They are the thing that give you the confidence to take the first step. The second and third steps may not be in line with the plan, but it is hard to start walking if you do not have confidence you can get where you intend to go.

The bike trip got me thinking about this because, as it turns out, we did not sleep where we intended to any night of the trip.

This was the final route we took: Madison to Madison
295 miles (less 10 miles that Rose drove us during our mechanical mishap)
Day 1-Madison to Barneveld
Day 2- Barneveld to Soldiers Grove
Day 3- Soldiers Grove to La Crosse
Day 4- La Crosse to Reedsburg
Day 5- Reedsburg to Madison

This was the route we planned to take: Madison to Madison

285 miles (less 0 miles as we did not plan to have any mechanical issues)
Day 1-Madison to Spring Green
Day 2- Spring Green to Ferryville
Day 3- Ferryville to Sparta
Day 4- Sparta to Baraboo
Day 5- Baraboo to Madison

The only thing consistent about our two plans are the start and end point, Madison to Madison. Despite changing paths as we went, our goals were certainly met. We visited Taliesin in Spring Green. We rode all day in beautiful weather as the leaves turned around us. I left the LSAT behind. My dad left work behind (for most of the day). We reflected on next steps and past accomplishments. We listened to Radiolab and This American Life episodes to occupy our minds when the hills got too tough.

Thus, we may have changed paths, but we never got off course. This realization that many paths can lead to the same destination is nothing new. People have discussed it for centuries. Still, it struck me as I pedaled through Wisconsin. I knew that my dad and I could not have set forth on this trip without knowing it was possible to bike from Madison back to Madison in 5 days. That is what the plan did for us. It told us it was possible. But the plan was not the trip. Our intentions, our goals, our worn out bodies, and the too-busy roads that forced us to reevaluate are what ultimately guided the way.

As I set forth on this nontraditional year, I have felt the discomfort people (including myself) have when I cannot exactly say how it will all fall in place. I do not have dates for my travels. I do not have much nailed down concretely. But I do know what I want and why I am where I am. I have a course with many paths and the confidence I can reach my destination. Biking around Wisconsin taught me that is all I need.

And...I always have my Google doc.