Unbilled Time

“Mentsch tracht, Gott lacht.”
- Yiddish proverb, “Man plans, God laughs.”

I’ve always been an obsessive planner — one who makes lists, schedules, budgets and logs — even for everyday activities. This instinct served me well in my I.T. career where my last title was “Project Planner”, though that described only a small percentage of my routine responsibilities.

A lifetime and career of project management has taught me a few things:

• Projects do not go according to plan;
• Any given task within the plan rarely goes according to plan; and
• Despite this, planning is better than not planning. We have a proverb of our own in project management, “failing to plan is a plan to fail.”

Our move to the new house is mostly complete. Over the past three weeks we’ve dealt with unexpected repairs and renovations, budget and schedule overruns, multiple contractors, legal requirements, endless packing and unpacking, stomach flu and sleeplessness, and several cats with moods ranging from trauma to exuberance. A few little tasks remain before we settle into long-term and lower-priority projects, but after less than ten days living here my wife and I feel the same way — it’s as though we have always lived here, and our last residence is a distant and alien memory, like a poorly remembered dream.

As with so many projects in the past, I look back on my best laid plans, my hopes and disappointments, my fears and frantic efforts at coping with new contingencies; and I laugh. Somewhere, God has been laughing all along.