The Stars Have Aligned, Hopefully

     Boy, I hope the stars really do align in 2020-2021!     

I got my planner for next year yesterday.  Brand-new planners have always made me a little light-headed with excitement.  There's something about all those blank pages, those clean and open squares and grids.  So much potential!

I remember the optimism I felt last year, when my 2019-2020 planner arrived.  It was right around this time of year last summer.  I pulled out the 2019-2020 school calendar and set to color-coding notable dates in the school-year: early dismissals, appointments, days off, vacations.  Oh my goodness, I remember thinking 2020 was going to be SO MUCH BETTER!!! than 2019 was.

And we all know how that worked out, don't we, Friends?

The theme of my 2019-2020 Pipsticks Planner was "Stay Golden." If you know your Robert Frost and your S.E. Hinton, you know that nothing gold[en] can stay.  All good things must come to an end.  

Also things that must come to an end are shit-shows like 2019-2020, if you want me to be absolutely blunt about it, and I think you do, otherwise, you wouldn't be reading this particular blog.  

So I had forgotten which Pipsticks planner I chose for 2020-2021, so when I opened that envelope yesterday and saw a silver-spangled blue cover with shades and the words "THE STARS HAVE ALIGNED," I took a sharp inhale and uttered let's hope so, Jacko.

I'm almost afraid to dive in and start filling in my 2020-2021 planner.  I did a real bang-up job of it in 2019-2020 with color codes, stickers, delightfully colored-in days for special occasions.  It was really amazing from August 2019 until Mid-March 2020 to open that planner up to the appropriate week, and see my plans in full color and festive stickers.  And then it all went to shit, didn't it?  

I'm not sure, but I wonder if part of my despair during the shut-down didn't have to do with watching each beautiful color-coded plan after March 13th turn to ash and get carried off in the wind.  It sounds silly, but plans are part of routines for me.  I am very routine-driven.  And each day on the calendar that did NOT go the way it was supposed to was a crumb of my routine that was shutting down.  And of course, there were more questions than answers, no income.  Dump truck loads of uncertainty.  

I sit here looking at "The Stars Have Aligned," and I'm wondering if maybe I hadn't ought to wait a little bit before I go planner-happy, filling in the squares and coloring in days off from school.  Maybe if I go into this next little stretch of time tragically underprepared, everything will go off as planned for all of us.  After all, I've really been working on being okay with focusing on the tasks at hand, right ahead of me, instead of spooling out Far Into The Future, ever since this pandemic hit.  

Maybe.  

On the other hand, it's either extremely hopeful or wildly insane to get out my stickers, markers, and colored pencils and set to recording.  To trust that maybe the stars really have aligned, and 2020-2021 is going to be Better. I think I'm gonna do it.  Get that planner all marked up.

After all, I feel like my personal brand is mostly "insanely hopeful."

So come on, Stars.  Don't let us down now!