planning

Get To Know You #48 — This or That

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Kymber Hawke wants to Get To Know Us. She poses three questions and asks us to respond to them. So let me help Kymber and you get to know Fandango…whether you want to or not.

Here is round 48:

1. Notorious or unnoticed?

When it comes to the blogosphere, I wouldn’t mind being known as “The Notorious Fandango.” In real life, however, I’m perfectly happy being relatively unnoticed.

2. Read thoughts or speak to animals?

I am not necessarily very skilled at reading the thoughts of others. Hell, sometime I don’t even understand my own thoughts. But when it comes to animals, particularly my pets, I speak to them all the time. And sometimes they even understand me.

3. Planning the future or living spontaneously?

When I was a young man, I did a lot of planning for the future, both career-wise and financially. I always invested the maximum amounts allowed in the retirement savings plans offered by the companies I worked for, knowing that at some point in the future, I would be retiring. I wanted to make sure I could live comfortably when that time came. And now I’m retired and happy to say that my planning worked.

And because of that, I’ve been able in my retirement to live more spontaneously.

Truthful Tuesday — Time Management

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Frank, aka PCGuyIV, is back with another episode of Truthful Tuesday. The idea behind Truthful Tuesday is for us to respond to the question (or questions) Frank asks and to be 100% truthful in our responses. No glib answers, no funny business, no fibs. Just raw honesty.

For this week’s Truthful Tuesday, Frank wants to know…

How much of a planner are you? Do you schedule your day down to the last minute, or do you prefer to leave your calendar as open as possible? How well do you respond to impromptu events, such as unplanned or last-minute get-togethers?

Do you remember the Day-Timer?

It was a handy dandy detailed day planner. It conveniently fit in the inside breast pocket of a man’s suit jacket. You could keep track of all your daily appointments, meetings, phone calls, flights, to-do list, and even reimbursable expenses in your Day-Timer. During my earlier working years, the Day-Timer was an indispensable tool that helped me organize my work life.

And then came Microsoft Outlook, a calendar app that could be shared across workgroups. And laptop computers. And then the BlackBerry and the iPhone. So much for the handy dandy detailed day planner that conveniently fit in the breast pocket of a suit jacket.

All of this reminiscing is a way of saying that, while I was still in the workforce, my time was, indeed, scheduled down to minute — or at least to the hour.

But now I am retired, and my time is my own. So, other than scheduled doctor and other appointments, visits with my kids and grandkids, which I keep track of on my calendar app, and my iPhone app that reminds me to clean out the coffee maker every two weeks, give the dog her flea, tick, and heartworm medicine monthly, pay certain recurring bills, and when my property tax payments are due, I like to keep my calendar open.

I must admit that in retirement I have become a creature of habit. Thus, impromptu, unplanned events or get-togethers are met with some initial trepidation. But the I quickly get over that initial resistance and can find myself actually getting stoked about doing something new and different.

I managed to sneak in today’s JusJoJan word, “stoked,” suggested by Nicole, who resides here.

The Wedding Planner

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Marsha was feeling a little tense as she was preparing for her daughter’s nuptials on Sunday. She had a preoccupation with all of the details and feared that she would run out of time before the big day.

Unfortunately, Marsha couldn’t just create more time, and with no time to waste, she reached out to her husband, who amid all the pressure Marsha was feeling, sat in the living room binge-watching “Stranger Things.”

“Bob, you need to shut off the TV, get up off your ass, and help me out with the wedding before I go completely insane,” Marsha said, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Of course, babe,” Bob said. He turned off the television, stood up, walked over to Marsha, gave her a big hug, and said, “You can count on me to be the wind beneath your wings.”

Marsha smiled. “Living with you, Bob, is never dull.”

Written for these daily prompts: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (tense/dull), Word of the Day Challenge (nuptials/wind), The Daily Spur (preoccupation), My Vivid Blog (run), Ragtag Daily Prompt (create), Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge (waste), Your Daily Word Prompt (amid), and E.M.’s Random Word Prompt (binge).

Blogging Insights — Planned Spontaneity

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Blogging insightsFor this week’s edition of Blogging Insights, Dr. Tanya wants to know…

Do you outline your posts (planning) or do you just go ahead by the seat of your pants (pantzing)?

There are two ways of looking at this question. I’m not sure which way Tanya meant, so I’m going to answer it from both perspectives.

One interpretation of the question is how you go about writing an individual post. Do you plan what you are going to write by creating an outline and then building your post around that outline? Or do you just start writing and see where it takes you? I’m the latter. I never outline my posts. I have a general idea of what I want to say, especially when it comes to writing flash fiction, and then I just start writing. Sometimes even I am surprised by where my writing takes me.

The other way to interpret Tanya’s question has to do with scheduling your posts in advance versus writing them more spontaneously. I do both.

For my FOWC with Fandango daily word challenge, I schedule my prompts up to two weeks in advance. For this month’s Blogging from A to Z (BATZAP) challenge, I schedule them up to a week in advance. And for my Flashback Friday prompts, I usually schedule them a few days in advance. Oh, I also write my posts for Jim Adams’ Song Lyric Sunday prompts on Friday or Saturday for posting at 3 a.m. my time on Sunday morning. But that’s because he tells us in advance what his upcoming SLS themes are going to be.

But most of my other posts are more seat of the pants. For example, I frequently put together posts in response to multiple daily prompts, which I obviously can’t do in advance as I have no idea, other than for my own FOWC prompt, what words the other bloggers who post daily word challenges will use. The same goes to the other writing prompts I participate in, like this one, like Melanie’s Share Your World prompt, like the various Mindlovemisery Menagerie prompts, and a number of others, given that I don’t know until the boggers publish those prompts, what the prompt picture or subject will be.

So I suppose I’m both a planner and a pantzer.

The Adventure

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Man in train stationSally had been planning this trip for a while. She needed to get away from her boring, mundane, routine existence at least for a week. She needed have an adventure. Otherwise she would end up going crazy.

She booked a three day scenic train ride from Chicago that would take her across the Rocky Mountains on her journey to the west coast. Then, once there, she’d spend a few days exploring the California coast before catching a flight back to Indianapolis.

Sally took a bus from Indy to Chicago. When she arrived at Union station in Chicago, she went to the track on which her train would be departing. As she was about to board the train, she spotted a stranger who was pulling a valise and walking in her direction. It was hard to make out his features from that distance, but there was something intriguing about him and she couldn’t take her eyes off of him.

When he got closer, she could see that he was quite attractive in a mysterious sort of way. She continued to watch him until he was almost standing in front of her.

He nodded at her. He smiled. He asked if he could help her get her bags on board the train. She smiled, said yes, and thanked him. Once on board, they sat down together. She told him that she was going on an adventure. He told her he would be starting a new job in San Jose in a few weeks and also wanted a bit of an adventure before he started working.

Sally never made it back to Indianapolis. Her existence was no longer boring, mundane, routine. Her new life was an adventure she now shared with the stranger pulling a valise that she met as she was boarding a three day scenic train ride across the Rocky Mountains to the west coast.

It’s been a while since I responded to one of Di’s Three Things Challenges prompts, so I thought I’d give this one a go. The three things are “planning,” “stranger,” and “valise.”

Ill-Conceived Celebration

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559FE81C-5F73-4C41-A131-1A8BF3DD6516“I need a pencil,” Aaron said. “Can you quit squatting in that corner and find me one?”

“Why do you need a pencil?” Ray asked.

“I’m planning the celebration.”

“What celebration?”

“To honor the President. He’s coming to town for a rally.”

“You want to plan a celebration for that imperious bastard?”

“He’s the President. We can’t afford not to celebrate his being here.”

“I can’t believe how happy you are to capitulate to that moron who is destroying our nation.

(Exactly 82 words)

26D489A5-3E66-4D92-866E-0551A1656DA9Written for Sammi Cox’s Weekend Writing Prompt (“celebration” in exactly 82 words). And for: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (pencil), Ragtag Daily Prompt (squat), Your Daily Word Prompt (imperious), Scotts Daily Prompt (afford), and Word of the Day Challenge (capitulate).