The saga of a 19 hour long journey
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I hate planning. Despise it really but the sad part is, I am obsessed with it. Alright to be very clear I am a person who obsesses over things to an almost… almost unhealthy limit and for this, we need to plan but when I do that I need to obsess over the plan because I end up feeling the plan is not “planny…?” enough. Yes, I know it’s hard to understand but it is how it is.
This is me trying to explain the inner workings of a highly broken brain, some days it is difficult for me to even peel a potato without having an existential crisis over it. Now, this isn’t going to be an article about me telling you how to plan ultra-awesome and win life because any advice from me would cause you to simply catch fire spontaneously and die but it shall tell you what’ll happen if we plan.
“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Is what someone said apparently or something along those lines but what they forgot to mention was how life likes to shit on plans anyways. How does one prepare for that outcome?
Is there a guide for that?
My planning began when I book the tickets to travel halfway across the world, to Canada and boy was it fun.
The Problem
Traveling for a vacation or a short trip seems easy and even fun for some unholy people but traveling to a whole other place and packing up your life? That takes time and effort. Human beings are natural hoarders, we hoard things like no other as though if we don’t buy this particular item instantly it’ll vanish into the air.
So, wrapping up all your belongings into two bags isn’t the easiest of tasks. This required some planning. The very first thing we need before we start planning is to understand what our problems are.
Problem 1: The very first problem I had was packing. I had to somehow fit everything I’d need into two bags and also make sure it matches the pre-mentioned weight and does not exceed it. FYI 46 kg isn’t much and it gets filled up very fast. Damn your hoarding tendencies.
Problem 2: My second source of problems was my books because you know I like them and would like to have them all with me. Now, this is not easy because… I have a significant and appropriate number of books. This was going to be a bit complicated.
Problem 3: Documents, I had to carry so many documents since I was going the first time I did not want to leave things to fate – a bad idea – so I had to make sure to have an efficient way to make sure that I carried them all.
Now that I knew what my problems were I just needed to find an appropriate way to plan for it all. Seems easy enough.
The Plan
It wasn’t, it wasn’t easy enough. There are so many things to consider when you try to find the solution to a problem and every time you solve something, there is some other thing that goes wrong.
I started 20 days early thinking I’ll certainly have everything in order and just breeze through the remaining days, boy was I wrong. Let me show you my obsessively poor planning skills.
Plan 1: Ok so I had a 46 kg allowance, that’s a lot, right? I mean I can work with that. I am a gold medalist in packing, I expertly divided my closet into what I’d be taking and what I wouldn’t be and immediately packed all the things I would be taking.
I divided the bag into levels, innerwear, house wear, outerwear, and fragile things. I was so proud of myself. I even managed to make space for household goods and other essentials. Perfect plan.
Plan 2: I definitely could not go without my books, they were my precious babies and I had to carry them all, so what can I do? Yes, I have got this! I can just divide them equally between my bags and my hand luggage. I mean I do have a 46 kg allowance, right? That’s so much space.
Plan 3: Document, papers, not much weight. An easy enough thing to pack. All I had to do was file them in the order I’ll need to retrieve them, and I am done. I even made a list of it all in order and tacked that on to the very front of the file. I am a master-level planner.
I finished planning this all in a few days and was so proud of it all but then came the execution part of it and things didn’t seem so easy after all. Where is my fairy godmother when I need her?
The Execution
Now that I had done master-level planning, it was time to execute it and boy am I excited to tell you that nothing went according to plan. I might as well have watched the paint dry for all the effort I put into it.
Result 1: Everything fit alright, just the bag didn’t close, forgot to plan for the closing part of it. Oh, and also it was well beyond 46 kg, just 10 more but still, I don’t think it was an acceptable amount. After that point, I just decided to carry the necessities. Sure it’s everything that your life is made up of but we forget we are humans, we adapt and rebuild, plus it’s just stuff. Not compromising on my outfits though, we are not cave people.
Result 2: A big part of why the bag did not close. Guys, books are heavy alright. I put 10 in my bag and that was it, it had reached its limits. It became very clear that I was not going to be able to carry it all, then I had to make the hard decision to choose only a few to carry and I also had to donate some of them. It was hard until it wasn’t, I just chose the ones that my close friends had given me. Logically I knew I could have them shipped but it was still painful leaving them behind.
Result 3: I never knew paper could get so heavy and so hard to manage. By the time I had arranged all the documents and everything else I’d be needing my hand luggage looked on the verge of suicide. The best part of it all? I did not need any of those documents, they didn’t ask for a single thing. So, there I was walking around like the hunchback of Notre Damme, and they did not ask me for a single thing.
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I’ll accept nothing went according to plan, I may have also gotten lost in the toilet at the airport, and the loving fungus that I married failed to recognize me, but it was still a fun journey and I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
recognize – did not see me because I was waving at an underground level. (added by “certain people” under pressure)
Some things are better unexpected. Like this post, it ends here. So, if you were expecting some moral ending you won’t be getting that, you pretentious human.
Bet you didn’t plan for that.
