Take on life

Life is unpredictable, no matter how predictable it looks. No matter how much you plan, it’s quite impossible to plan for unforeseen events.

I mean, I experienced this firsthand. I take care of my car every 3–6 months with regular maintenance, and I still got surprised when my battery needed to be replaced, which affected my entire day.

I usually pay around $105 for an oil change, get notified of any issues, and have my tires rotated. But then, on some random Wednesday, I suddenly had a $900 car expense for battery change, brake padding, and fluid.

I can try my very best to save, let’s say, $2,000 so I can always be prepared for car issues. But maybe next time, God forbid, it’s a car accident and the car gets totaled. Now I might need $30,000, or maybe I’m $28,000 short. You just never know.

The point is, whether you’re a billionaire, millionaire, or thousand-aire, inconveniences arrive. They happen to all of us. And I’m not saying it’s wrong to prepare, to plan, or to be ready. I’m saying: be ready to not be ready as well.

I’m literally trying to work every day—not the 12- or 16-hour-a-day type of thing, but after my full-time commitments, I’m trying to work a little extra, maybe four hours a day. And even that is difficult.

Not because I don’t want to work, but because the people in charge of scheduling have their own lives, minds, and issues. Sometimes they can’t tell me when I’ll be scheduled until they actually make the schedule. Even if I’ve already told them my availability, how am I supposed to plan my life around that?

Honestly, this feels worse than asking someone to use their own PTO that they earned.

It’s a reminder for me to find a way to become the scheduler of my own life—to become the boss of my own life—because right now, I can only be the boss of so much.

I’m bossing up my finances, but now I’m dealing with an unpredictable schedule. So even though I’m gaining more control in one area of my life, I’m still limited in another.

And maybe that’s the point.

You can prepare for life, but you can’t control every variable. You can save the money, maintain the car, plan your schedule, and do everything “right,” and something can still come along that you never saw coming.

So maybe taking on life means more than being prepared.

Maybe it means being prepared to adapt when your preparation isn’t enough.

-Until next time my Vines