No Plans At Present

It’s that January 2^nd kind of job: the party’s over, the New Year is really getting started and it’s time to take the decorations down. Spraying tinsel all over the floor I’ve just hoovered, I’m hit by mixed emotions. Removing the decorations is always sad but the New Year spirit, which makes a full room makeover seem not only feasible but necessary, spurs me on.

While I’m renewing my room to it’s less festive aesthetic, I come across the calendar I was given in my stocking. Having not bothered with a wall calendar since I was little – the novelty of a different member of The Wanted to drool over each month sadly worn off – I was excited to start using one again. But once I’d sat down and picked up my pen, ready to cover January in ink, my heart sank. It dawned on me properly for the first time: I have literally no plans for 2021.

We’re used to January being a rather disappointing month event-wise, granted. After the jam-packed social schedule of December, our favourite outfits stuffed back into their rarely visited positions in the wardrobe, January’s plans look comparably uninviting. But among the meetings, appointments and those daily jogs we’ve promised ourselves we’ll complete, there are usually a couple of events to lift the spirits. A trip to the cinema, perhaps? Dinner with friends? And if we want more excitement, we only have to turn the calendar a few pages to scribble down that holiday we’ve booked, or the festival we’ll spend all summer excited to attend. But this is 2021. No matter how far through the year I turn, my calendar remains unalterably, scarily, empty.

I tell myself at least this is marginally better than 2020, where calendars became butchered with row upon row of crossings out, their plans unceremoniously cancelled. And then I remember something. Halfway through 2020 the outlook seemed only grim. The national lockdown had far surpassed the three weeks we’d all naively expected and I’d convinced myself that we’d still be facing the same restrictions come Autumn. Yet, of course, things changed. We came out of it much earlier than that and life returned to some degree of normality for a while.

During this time, slap bang in the middle of one of August’s heatwaves, I spent a day on the beach with my family. Sitting on the sand, eating our picnic and listening to the soothing ripples of the water, I was hit by a sudden wave of gratitude. I realised that this was a day I’d never expected to have. It had not been planned, it certainly was not put in the calendar – by May we’d learned this was far too optimistic a risk. And yet, there we were. Having the most glorious, peaceful day in the sunshine.

This memory gives me hope for 2021. My calendar may be empty right now but it will eventually be filled with days that I cannot yet envision. Having nothing planned does not mean nothing will happen. Though, undoubtedly, there will be hardship ahead this year, there are also good days coming. Days we cannot yet imagine. Days we cannot plan.

For now, my calendar is hanging on the wall, waiting in anticipation. Its first few pages may remain unavoidably bare but, with any hope, I’ll be able to fill it with more each passing month. Either way, when I look at it, I will remember that some of our best days cannot be planned. I’ll look forward to discovering and enjoying them along the way.