Long silly story ... related ... but not necessarily applicable .... offered for amusement, should you care to read along.
I was once a Type-A. I was a high performing software developer, team-lead-type. I set and met high goals. Neither change nor surprise were well accepted. I conquered and felt pretty good about all that. I lived and breathed by my calendar. My customers loved the results, I got tons of referral business ... but there was friction between me, my staff and employer.
Fast forward to age 40: I returned to my first love, horses. I had hit a point in my life where finances were comfortable and I could afford to add horses as an extra-curricular activity to a busy life. In fact, my health likely needed a shift towards a more athletic lifestyle. My re-entry, as much of my life, was planned and cautious. Then, 8 years later, I threw caution to the wind and added a horse fresh off the race track. A mare. A hot mare. A worried mare. An injured mare in crisis mode. Wow ... what a change from my steady-eddie gelding and predictable trail ride world. This horse changed everything. I went back to school to learn horsemanship from the ground up ... and, as result, all of life is different and better.
I learned to recognize when I was "direct line" (needing to be in control of everything) and how to relax my grip (first literally and then figuratively). I learned while it is ok to have a plan (know what I want as outcome) the horse is in charge of the timeline. I learned to allow drift and to create draw (allow the horse to take space when needed and how to influence the horse to want to come back on its own w/out using the rope or bribery). I learned how to engage a horse's mind and to play at liberty in large, open places (no ropes, halters, etc). I learned how to create partnership with the horse and to create such a feeling of safety and harmony that the horse chooses to be with me. Many things that changed in me for the sake of the horse also related extremely well in other areas of my life. While I was great at solving problems before -- I developed a 'solutionary' point of view while reading the horse, the human and the circumstance with new eyes and new understanding. I became far more compassionate and understanding with my tech team as individuals -- and it worked well. I'm no longer a Type-A. People around me like the change ... and those who didn't know me in my early career don't believe the descriptions of my former self. ;-)
So how does this relate to this thread? I'll get to that ...
And how is the horse now? Yesterday that mare blew my mind. What a partner!
Just before evening feed, I took the gelding to the arena for one-on-one play time. After he hit a particular milestone, I praised him and released him to nibble on small, dry patches of grass around the arena fence. I left the arena gate open while I prepared the evening feed hoping he'd find his way out. (Note, my gelding, now 21 yo, is not the brightest horse. Sweet, but not particularly bright. A good follower, but not often showing leadership.) When I called him, he got stuck. He came towards me but hit the arena fence and forgot to look for the open gate on the opposite side.
My mare, already nosing into her feed and truly in control of the entire paddock with feed for both horses ... volunteered to solve the problem. She left her feed, raced to and around the arena, entered the gate, rounded up the troubled gelding and led him back to the paddock for me. Phew. What a super horse. She recognized the problem and created a solution. (I'm left wondering, did she do that for me or for him? Hmmm.)
Back to the context of this thread.
In early 2015 my husband and I booked a grand adventure, a 59-night cruise for summer 2016. The dates were perfect (hitting a milestone b'day and my university customer's summer cycle with far fewer events), the itinerary was perfect (Sydney to San Francisco; adding a key segment to our world cruise goal), the ports were perfect (mostly new to us, would have included Disney parks in Hong Kong, Shanghai grand opening, and Tokyo!) and we both would have sufficient vacation time on the books. We were able to reserve perfect lay-flat seats in business class for the outbound flight to Sydney on reward miles. We snagged a few nights in Sydney in a 1BR timeshare for our arrival, pre-cruise. Everything lined up. Everything.
We submitted our vacation requests to our respective managers. (We both worked for the same company -- but in different divisions.) My boss signed my vacation request right away after a brief review of my customer's tolerance for the plan and impact to revenue. My husband's boss sat on the request. And sat. And sat. After 10 months of sitting on the request he denied it. WHAT? Who does that? (To soften the blow, he offered, "I would have approved one month ... but not two.")
My Type-A began to resurface ... first as frustration ... but, in fact, there was no time for that. This was a time for action! The denial came just 1 day before we would have encountered a major cancellation penalty on the cruise and I needed to get our plans changed. I found a shorter cruise (25-nights rather than 59-nights; San Diego to Sydney by way of Hawaii) ... but it didn't check all the boxes. It was still trans-Pacific but in Oct rather than summer, the ports were largely 'blah' in our view (South Pacific islands rather than Asia), it didn't celebrate my husband's milestone b'day (ugh!), etc. On the bright side, the candidate replacement cruise was far less expensive allowing us to upgrade our cabin type while still pocketing savings.
As I worked to turn the ship around (change our plans), things fell into place. American Airlines allowed me to change the flight for free and we got the same seats, still using reward miles. The cruise agent allowed me one free change and moved all our payments/insurance/etc. to the new cruise. The timeshare, booked for Sydney, was available for the Oct dates as a post-cruise stay and could be changed for free.
Oh, what about my university customer's school schedule? It frankly didn't matter at that point. Somewhere during the 10 months leading up to this panic, our employer was making changes to spin off certain parts of the business and to narrow its focus. After considerable review, it was determined that my customer didn't fit either the "spin off" category or the "keep" category and I was instructed to end the contract. I was given the opportunity to find continued work w/in the company but elected layoff with early retirement benefits for a variety of reasons. My husband's division was part of the "spin off" and remaining home for summer 2016 was, in retrospect, pretty important.
So, having a plan is great. Being able to redirect challenges and find solutions? Even better.
EDITED TO ADD: We truly enjoyed the replacement cruise. Turns out, after months of intense stress going through the spin-off/layoff processes ... we both needed a low-key itinerary filled with beaches rather than busy ports. We'll get to those ports, someday!
