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"     laughing hysterically at god-knows-what in my unplanned for red dress   So I planned on wearing this little vintage gold backless minidress on my birthday forever. Or, you know, for the past couple of weeks. Which is a pretty long time to plan on wearing something. Anyway, as I was getting ready to meet my friends for dinner on Saturday night, I pulled it on over my head, looked in the mirror....and realized that it was all wrong. Way too glittery and gold for a dinner and some East Village bar-hopping. So after a few panicked moments during which the entire contents of both of my closets ended up on my bedroom floor, I settled on a tomato-red v-neck dress that I&amp;#039;ve had for years. Kind of a let-down but it just goes to show how even the simplest of plans can go totally awry. And then there are the bigger categories of plans. Like the ones we make on New Year&amp;#039;s Eve when we sit down and plan out who we&amp;#039;re going to be in the next year, how we&amp;#039;re going to be better, what we&amp;#039;re going to do and when. Or for me, that always happens on birthdays. Another year older just seems more urgent to me than a new calendar year. So instead of New Year&amp;#039;s resolutions, I make birthday resolutions. I come up with a game plan for what I&amp;#039;m going to accomplish in the year&amp;#039;s time before I&amp;#039;m yet ANOTHER year older. My mental checklist of goals this year went something like this:   Finish novel ASAP.   Stop dating ridiculously inappropriate men.   Stop dating ridiculously unavailable men.   Stop smoking socially.   Run five miles a day and eat less. Or at least eat healthier.   So, okay, I broke two out of five about, oh, three hours into my birthday but I, um....did my best....? ANYway, I&amp;#039;m fully aware that most of these things are probably going to take a little more time and growing up than a year can provide but I just can&amp;#039;t help making my little lists.  I&amp;#039;m sure we all have a plan, a mental checklist that will comprise our perfect lives. But I&amp;#039;m also sure that no matter how diligently we design and classify and organize, it&amp;#039;s pretty futile. Because we can strategize all we want, but when it comes down to it, they&amp;#039;re just blueprints that don&amp;#039;t take into account the unexpected. The unforeseen things, people, and events that can derail even the best laid plans. But we do the best we can. And in the end, that&amp;#039;s all anyone can do.  And besides, sometimes, those unexpected things, those blindsiding moments that you never see coming\u2013sometimes those are exactly the ones that are really worth living for. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/news/a121/the-best-laid-plans-4579/>