It’s funny; I don’t really consider myself a planner.
   Often, I think, I prefer spontaneity when allowed. I seem to take advantage of spontaneity when it becomes available to me. Or, I suppose, that’s what I would like to think.
   I find ways, or have intentions, for how I fill my time, all the time.
   I’ve got a couple of manuscripts always at the “almost completed” stage.
   I know poetry month doesn’t happen until April, yet I’ve already begun collecting prompts, and I have notebooks and folders of words or ideas, perhaps even complete poems in need of a good edit.
   I also have sketches and photographs and notes for paintings, or styles of paintings, I wish to embark on (or attempt) when I have more time and space.
   I have lists, mental lists if nothing more, of things I want to do.
It is something I do. I guess, or I say, I’ve always got something on the go.
I’ve always, it seems, got something to complete or something I want to do.
Poems, manuscripts, paintings; I have many plans for many artistic projects.
   And still, I don’t call myself a planner.
   I think ahead. I know I do that a lot. But I never refer to it as “planning”.
   If that’s not planning, it is creating intentions — perhaps, even expectations — for what I wish to accomplish.
   This is how I seem to fill my time.
   But why?
   Why is it necessary for me to fill my time, all the time?
   My dayplanner, for the next couple of days, has no appointments, no must dos or to-do lists, but it is not as if I don’t have plans.
   I have to have plans, for I am a planner, even if I won’t admit it to myself.

02/12/2024                                                                                              j.g.l.