Bread Crumbs to Creative Bliss

My best friend's favorite expression about spontaneity is that "carefully planned spontaneity" is the best kind. This rather seems a contradiction to me. For a more creative view of spontaneity, view the LifeDev: Productivity for Creative People Blog -- post on spontaneity. Spontaneity is about carefully injecting creativity into life to nurture flexibility.

I was much more insistent on carefully laid plans when I was younger, to the point of driving my high school friends to distraction. Today, I've learned to be flexible and adapt to the unmarked roads and potholes along the way. It seems to me that the appropriate course of action seems to be to strike a balance between being planful and recognizing and seizing opportunities when they arise.

The originators (Mitchell, Krumboltz, and Levin) of the planned happenstance theory would agree. Life is about planning to take advantage of the opportunities that fall into one's path. More than making your own luck. More than sitting back and hoping to be in the right place at the right time. Rather, framing some plans and dreams, some overarching goals and then staying open and receptive to unexpected "happenings" that lead to life change.

My personal happenings . . .
* began a relationship with a man I met online in a teacher's interest forum -- and I married him (9 years of marriage in May '08)
* submitted a resume for a ministry position, and it landed in the hands of a church trustee who was impressed and rushed it to the search committee -- I not only worked there for 3 years, but the man who initially received my resume is one of my closest friends
* interviewed for a job in a field I never planned to enter -- and stayed for 5 years (so many opportunities to learn, so many successes -- wrote over $50,000 in federal grants, created and headed a new department, developed a new program for Spanish language speakers, to name a few)
* took up my husband's hobby of reading comic books -- and landed on a national committee to review graphic novels for teens (in turn, that has led me to organize a club for teens who love comics/graphic novels)
* worked as a Children's Librarian for about nine months at a local library and made numerous friends among the staff and patrons that have led me to a new church and new activities
* searched for social media information on Facebook -- and connected with a non-profit to assist with a community knowledge project (and who knows where that will lead given the skills I'm developing)
* took a class with an amazing professor my first year in my PhD program -- and now I've switched departments and courses of study to work directly with her on motivation and engagement

These are but a few of the example that illustrate the convergence of events, or flow, that represents synchronicity throughout my personal life journey. At many times in my life, I have felt an unseen force guiding events and attracting people to me serendipitously in the most amazing -- and unexpected -- of ways. Encounters, new friends, life-altering experiences -- all of these I can attribute to this idea of interconnected happenings. The trick is recognizing the doors when they open -- they seem like coincidences and could easily pass unnoticed, so it's important to be living in the moment and tuned into life's events.