The Gameplan (The Perfect Life)
Table of contents for The 30 diaries
One of my landmark conversations with my boss started off with,
I have a plan.
He smiled and said,
I’m always glad to hear that. Let’s hear it.
And in that moment I knew he had assessed me (right) before I’d assessed myself and he liked what he saw. I like it too. I like being prepared, I like making lists. I always have a plan.
Of course I would have a game-plan for life. It got formulated somewhere in my late teens and pretty well fell into shape as I eased out of them, so let’s say for convenience that the plan is about a decade old now, shall we? Here’s what I planned my life would look like -
20 yrs – Graduate. I was put into school a year early so this wasn’t really an unrealistic goal. Next step: get into one of the big b-schools
22 yrs – Complete education (finally!) and start working.
23/24 yrs – Get married to an intelligent, loving, sensible man (preferably a few years older than me) and be a part of a cool, smart, urban couple. Have great sex, read together, enjoy music together, lounge around Sundays in kurtas and jeans.
26 yrs – Have baby no.1. Having spent at least a year enjoying the marital relationship before comitting to parenthood. Maternity leave to be spent exploring art and music since presumably working life wouldn’t allow for it.
29/30 yrs – Have baby no.2. Preferably of opposite sex as baby no.1 (one of each). Three year gap is recommended for healthy sibling relationships. I definitely want to have more than one child. Having been an only child myself, I wouldn’t want my kid to grow up without siblings. Maternity leave no.2 activities to be a continuation or alternate to maternity leave no.1
30 yrs – Take a sabbatical to spend time with children and re-assess career. By this time, I expected to have worked for about 8 years and be an ‘important’ person in the workforce. Probably work from home.
32 yrs – Back to work. Kids in school and pre-school respectively.
45 yrs – Quit career. Kid no.1 is 19 yrs old and kid no.2 is 16. Write a book.
47 yrs – Both kids are legal adults now and presumably able to fend for selves. Husband should have had as much sex, affection, attention, energy as he could possibly want from me by now. Leave home and spend a year in a Buddhist monastry.
48 yrs – Return to everyday living/stay in the monastry/who knows? I figured that by this time I’d know what I really wanted to do with my life and would have checked off all the necessary expectations so people would leave me alone to live my life as I wanted.
Career success – check
Financial stability – check
Artistic fulfilment (music, art, writing) – check
Marriage – check
Motherhood – check
I still think it was a damn good, if somewhat ambitious plan. What a lovely life it would have been if it had gone that way!
Jennifer on 
Anu on 
Lemony on 
Prolific Dyslexic on 
1Pragni
wrote on 10 April 2009 at 0:33
You know what this inspires me to do? Take this as a tag, and write down my game-plan for life.. I have already started to go hay-wire from my original plan.. soo off the track..
Pragnis last idea: Breaking down the recession and finding an opportunity in it
2Rakhi
wrote on 10 April 2009 at 2:45
I’m gonna come up with a cliched quote here.
‘Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making plans.’ I still think your current life is no less fulfilling than the plan here.
cheers…
3IdeaSmith
wrote on 10 April 2009 at 14:42
@ Pragni: Wait and watch for the rest of the ‘30 diaries’ series! And oh, that’s a brilliant idea, the tag I mean!
@ Rakhi: Abso-fucking-lutely! Bleh. Cribbing is part of the deal.
4Jane Doe
wrote on 11 April 2009 at 10:18
very similar to the one I’ve made for myself… ten years from now I plan to take stock…
Glad that you seem to be stickin to the plan…
Jane Does last idea:
5'nonnymous
wrote on 11 April 2009 at 17:03
your plan sounds almost ‘poetic’….
All of us, Absolutely ALL of us want the same things in life, and after we make this list we even revise it and say, that’s not too greedy!, it’s just a simple happy life! Not like we’re asking for all the riches of the world or anything… and then life happens, as Rakhi says, and we get a lot more than we bargained for… and a lot less than we hoped.
It’s sweet isn’t it? The innocence with which we say ‘Dear God’ and hope things to work out perfectly in place?
6Ms Taggart
wrote on 21 April 2009 at 19:33
Hmm… even I had a plan.. And just like yours mine has changed a lot too.. from what I was when I was 20 to what I am now.. there is a huge difference … I really should write it all…
You really inspire me to get back to blogging.. I must say!
7the mad momma
wrote on 21 April 2009 at 19:44
this reads like my life – except for the monastry and book. i dont think i have anything to write a book about and neither do i think i could do without all the sex i've been getting all this while according to plan. oh and its not kurtas and jeans, its tees and shorts around here….
really – its just a life. neither perfect not imperfect. just a life…
8IdeaSmith
wrote on 22 April 2009 at 6:30
@ Jane Doe: I'm hardly sticking to the plan. See my next post – it's about how my life is what happened contradictory to them plan. :-p
9IdeaSmith
wrote on 22 April 2009 at 6:30
@'nonnymous: It's bittersweet at the end. I don't yet know if I like it or not.
10IdeaSmith
wrote on 22 April 2009 at 6:31
@Ms Taggart: So blog already!
11IdeaSmith
wrote on 22 April 2009 at 6:32
@themadmomma: :@ Hey! That's my perfect life you've got there!
12Rada
wrote on 22 April 2009 at 9:10
I read your post sitting in a strange room and on the wall there is a poster which says:
"You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore."
Means something to you?