Daniel Burnham quote is a familiar one, particularly to Chicagoans. He said, "Make no small plans; they have no magic to stir a man's blood." The quote itself has taken a life on its own, and has been used to inspire generations of planners and planner wannabes. Burnham was in the middle of designing the 1893 Columbian Exposition when he uttered this famous sentence, and the Exposition itself was of course a grand example of how great plans can be greatly executed.
I am a born planner. I love spreadsheets, checklists, flow charts. I love organizing things. When I was little, I would take all the wire hangers and organize them by color, red, orange, yellow, but then pink would go on the other side of red because it is relates to red in a different way, then purple can go on the other side of pink, then blue next to purple... Everything in my world has its own order, with logical reasoning behind it. In the same way, I loved organizing people. At age 5, my girlfriends and I organized a singing group on the nursery school steps because the boys were not sharing the big plastic ride toys with the girls and rather than competing with them for the toys (which some of my other friends did) I chose to organize a different activity.
This flair for planning, organizing, implementing, coupled with a tendency to not give up and a talent for sleeping in three-hour chunks has served me well over the years. I am the only person I know who plans childbearing the same way I plan other things. My plan to reach four children was to start having the first child at age 25 and have the children spaced about two to three years apart. Even a miscarriage between the second and third child did not derail me for long. I rested a few months, and caught right back up with Vanessa born two weeks short of Jacob's birthday.
This love for putting everything in its rightful place in time and space spills over to my entertainment life as well. I love puzzle games, whether they involve words, numbers, shapes, etc. Growing up, I was often seen with crossword puzzles, or "logic" puzzle books in hand. I enthusiastically participated in riddle games, spent hours playing Tetris as a teenager, eagerly joined the office card game with co-workers decades my senior, and took up Sudoku in the last decade. When I sit down at the computer, I usually instinctively start or continue a Wordscraper game.
It's in Wordscraper that I recently learned a life lesson about plans and outcomes. I was playing a game with someone and it was a close game. I was a few points ahead, and then my opponent was a few points ahead. That kind of a close game. In the end I had three tiles left, but the board was so tight that I could only place these tiles one tile at a time. My opponent was also putting down her tiles one tile at a time. Then it came down to two tiles left for me. I placed my tile--a measly six point move. At this point I could see that my opponent only has one tile left. I was only three points ahead and even though the tile I had remaining was only worth one point, I thought my opponent would win for sure.
Imagine my surprise when she passed her turn and wrote, "can't place my last tile" in the chat box! Life does take a surprising turn sometimes. Even when everything seems to be going in one direction. There can be unexpected twists and surprising bumps ahead. The planner in me loves seeing steps accomplished one at a time and like checking off items on a list one at a time. The planner in me also gets very frustrated when I could not move forward to the next step, or when circumstances change that add additional steps in between where I was and the end point. In the decades I have lived since organizing singers on the nursery school playground I have learned to be more flexible and to plan for contingencies. But while I have gained skilled to be a more effective planner and project manager, my ability to handle the emotional reaction to setbacks and detours had only slightly improved since I was a 5 year old.
The Wordscraper game is a practical and poignant illustration of one small tile can be an obstruction. In this case it works in my favor. But at another time, there may be another small tile that works against me. Hopefully I can be as emotionally prepared for that as I am logistically prepared when that happens.
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