Skip to main content

Planning Around the Chaos

Good morning Friends! I hope that your holidays were fabulous this year, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa. Happy Holidays. And now, we are 4 days out from New Years. The holidays are a strange time of year for me, and here’s why...they amplify the normal crazy of my life by like a thousand. Anybody else feeling that? Like there’s normal budgeting, and then there’s holiday budgeting. There’s normal meal planning, and then there’s holiday meal planing. Like for example, last week on Friday, I sat down to do my normal weekly meal plan, totally spacing on the fact that we were about to enter an insane holiday week. I forgot to buy potatoes for latkes (we celebrate Hanukkah). I forgot that we go out to Chinese food on Christmas Day, so I don’t need to meal plan that day. I forgot. I forgot. I forgot. And it’s okay.

In response to my blog last week, I had a couple of comments from people who really want to meal plan but are struggling with the actual planning time or the ordinary chaos in their everyday lives or just how to actually weave it into every day life. Here’s the deal: Everyone’s life is chaotic in some way, and what works for me may not work for you. Use my suggestions as a launching pad to figure out how to get started and make modifications as you go. But you won’t learn what works for you until you try a few things that just don’t. Chaos is no excuse, and wishing for something doesn’t make it happen.

I’m stepping off my soap box now.

Now, the point of this blog...Tips for how to plan really anything in the midst of your chaos.

1. Contain the chaos; don’t try to control it.
Everyone has chaos. My husband and I are smack in the middle of building a house that is taking much longer than we thought, and our apartment lease expires in a month. But hey, small victory- we finally have a functional bathroom- no more bathroom in a bucket. (Yep, we’ve been roughing it). On top of that, one side of my family celebrates Hanukkah, like my husband and I do; and the other side celebrates Christmas. I am trying to prepare for Clinical teaching next semester to graduate in May, which means endless hours staring at a screen taking online professional development modules (which are super informative, just dry). We all have chaos. Do we try to control it... well, to be fair, I am more than a little guilty of this. I have endless notepads and lists and schedules in an effort to try to control it. But it almost never works. What does work is containing the chaos, which means being aware of when chaos is just going to happen and working around it. Like this week... those who celebrate Hanukkah are eating more than a little fried food and Chinese food this week. Those who celebrate Christmas are eating hams and tons of candy. So what? You knew it was coming. These holidays come around every year- they are expected. Make the chaos part of the plan.

2. Keep the schedule consistent.
Those who are successful in life have one major thing in common- they are consistent with a few specific things. Those things ground them and give them a sense of stability in the midst of all the things. I journal every single day- even if that means I journal at noon. This is actually a newer habit of mine, which I started in mid-October and just determined not to miss a day. On one page I write my emotional state. Did something happen yesterday that made me super happy or hurt my feelings? Did I deal with it appropriately? Is there a way I could change my perspective on said event? On the second page, I write three or more things that I am grateful for. Some days, that is easier than others, but it at least starts my day off with some positivity. Then I write my goals that I am working on right now, as if I have already achieved them. (Thank you, Rachel Hollis for that inspired idea). You can do the same thing with meal planning or really any planning. Sit down at a consistent time every week, whether consistent means sometime over the weekend or at precisely 7:03pm on Saturday evening. Whatever works for you.

3. Sometimes, life happens, and you just have to go with it.
Two weeks ago, I was in the midst of a mini-mester, which if you don’t know what that is, is a super-intense, 3-credit hour, 16-week course that you take over the course of 1 crazy week. You are literally in the classroom from 8am to 5pm for a week. It’s insane, but it’s also so good. Well, homework took a little longer than usual those evenings, and my sweet husband had to be the house-husband for the week. I meal -planned for him the week before and bought the groceries before the week started, but he did ALL the cooking. ALL OF IT. On top of that, one of our sweet friends got into a pretty serious car accident that week, which threw us for an emotional loop, just super grateful that he was still alive. Life happens. But what are you gonna do in those exceptional seasons if the chaos of life blindsides you every day. How do you even handle the crazy if you can’t plan around the normal? I would go crazy.

Really, the key to meal planning and any planning really, is dedication. If I showed you the number of tools I have and the number of lists and journals and plans and calendars I have, just sitting on my desk right now, you would probably think I needed help. That’s fair. I will admit, I like to have more than a little organization
, but I am working on that. And I can think of way more than a few people in my life who need just a little bit of a semblance of control in their lives. So while I may need to allow myself to not plan and to be spontaneous (ugh that word hurts to say out loud), on the flip side, a lot of people need to gain some control in their lives.

Here is my challenge: Stop letting life happen to you. You have control where you need it if you will just take it. TAKE IT! Chaos is not an excuse, and wishing is NOT a strategy. And quite frankly, if you’re not in some level of control over your life, who is? Who are you letting control you?

Until Next Week,

Your Friend Ashley
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In the Face of Student Apathy

  I once read a joke as a teenager that resonated with me:  Student 1: "Did you know that ignorance and apathy are the two biggest problems in America?"  Student 2: "Don't know and don't care!"  As I come to the end of my third year as a high school teacher, I genuinely think this joke was on to something. Student apathy and ignorance seems to be at an all-time high.  According to a paper published by the Social Science Research Network in 2011, 8 years before COVID-19,  " Student apathy has risen to a level that places education in the United States at serious risks. The current U.S. student has become an unmotivated apathetic individual with a lack of interest, goals, and determination to succeed in the academic curriculum. The United States has fallen out of the top 10 countries in education levels of students and continuing on a downward spiral. Student apathy has been cited as a serious problem by 29% of teachers ranking higher than all other areas
Post a Comment
Read more

The Strength to Be

          The world of the millennial generation is chaos. There is always this need to do, to change, to go, to create, to produce, to always be moving. Our phones have gone from calling to doing everything we need at the tip of our fingers, and they are ever getting faster. Our attention spans have been shot down so far that we can't wait the five or ten minutes it takes to prepare a cheeseburger at a fast food joint without cocking an entitled attitude and attacking the restaurant with a bad review or making nasty comments on Facebook about your "bad service." We have become so wrapped up in all the things that we feel we have to do that we have forgotten how to interact with our fellow human beings. There is so much pressure on our generation to push above and beyond the last. We must climb to new heights, discover new things. We must "make a difference." But can we just be? Can we just sit for five minutes and not feel like we should be occupying our brain
Post a Comment
Read more

Finding Humanity

I have never liked New Year's Resolutions. While they seem great in concept, they seem like a setup for failure in action. However, I have always been a very goal-oriented person. Somehow for me, calling it a goal and not a resolution just seems so much more workable for me. Humanity. Specifically my own humanity. It has hit me like a ton of bricks the last few weeks. Here is some basic background on the situation. At our last family gathering, Grandma made the statement that she does not feel as if she will make it through the year. Having already lost Grandpa, that statement hit really hard. I have felt every emotion imaginable since that moment. My parents and siblings have been out of my world for two years now and out of Grandma's since Grandpa died in 2011. Still, while the rest of us have given up hope that my dad will ever change, she still holds out. She prays for him constantly, loves him unceasingly, and still hopes that God will change his heart. I hate watching
Post a Comment
Read more