Plan to plan.

Today is one of those mythical unicorn-like days where things come into focus.

As the dust settles from manuscript drafts being completed, experiments being sampled, and decreased overall obligations, I find the air clearer and I can gain perspective.

I'm about halfway through my 5th year of graduate school. All signs point to the fact I'll be able to graduate in 2014: right when I want.  I'll spend the rest of this year (into mid-May) finishing some experiments for a paper, teaching a class, and drafting said paper. I have one draft I just finished, and one almost-polished paper ready to be submitted in the next few months.  If all goes according to plan *knock on wood*, I'll get all three out there into the submission ether before I leave for my internship in May.

Spend May through August taking in life in the "real world" with a quasi-grown up job, and return to Madison in September.

Spectacular September will be spent doing Ironman WI, and kicking off an academic year filled with responding to manuscript edits, making some headway on another chunk of research, applying to postdocs, figuring out the next stage of my life all while taking time to breathe and enjoy my last year in grad school.

Although the thought has been tossed around that it would be perfect year to spend starting a family (I will be 27-going-on-28), my inner 20-something freaks out that I'm way too young, and I think we might adopt another doggie instead.  Less dirty diapers that way.

When I'm stressed out, I plan.  Plan out my day, my week, the next few months into the future, as if I actually had the capacity to control all of it.  I know I don't, that my planning is a somewhat delusional way of letting me take control over a world with very few factors within my control, but planning relaxes me. The idea that I can do something to shape and mold my future is powerful, and one thats really helped me to get where I am.

Yes, I plan a lot.  Probably too much. But I'm flexible and prepared to take advantage of any opportunity that comes my way. 

I didn't think I'd be in Wisconsin going to grad school. For years I thought I'd be a "real doctor", not a PhD, but as you follow your passions things fall into place.  Opportunities present themselves and you can walk down a path way better than you ever imagined.

And so I stand here, stepped in a planing-induced tranquility that lets me breathe in the next 18 months.  Knowing that I can't dictate so much of whats to come, yet also reveling in the fact that is ~40% of things turn out the way I want, I'll have an amazing future.