How to Have a Perfect Day – Planning + Spontaneity

The formula for the perfect day is simple. Plan a great day and then add gelato.

I’m a total believer in planning, both because I love the anticipation and because most good things don’t just happen on the fly. Half of the fun of an event is the anticipation.

Our day fishing and talking to ducks was great, but the pleasure we we gained from it was multiplied because we were able to look forward to this all weekend. Also, if we hadn’t planned, it would have been early afternoon before we decided we wanted to go fish, if we even thought of it, and we never would have made it out there to enjoy this view.

Now I don’t mean planning down to the minute, or even the hour. All we planned for the day was that he would join me in not working today, we would go fish and find ducks, and we would cook and eat filet mignon that we got for a steal at Trader Joe’s.

Planning to take days off is vital as well. This is the first day my husband has planned to take off in the almost three weeks that he started working. He has taken days off, but they were never planned ahead of time. Either events or exhaustion has ended up keeping him home a few times, but of course without planning we haven’t been able to really take advantage of those days at all. This was soooooo much better. Sure, snow days are awesome. They are so much better than the normal work day. But, vacation days spent well are even better. It’s on the planned days that you can end up in California or Europe or Disney.

I know I talked about planning and today in reference to this book I reviewed yesterday. But this isn’t a new thing for me, the book just helped me put words to my thinking.

I know it looks like this post is about planning, but the cherry on top, the part that made this day pure perfection was the after dinner question, “So, should we do something else?”

That led to putting the bathed baby in the car in her PJ’S and going to get gelato and wander around the trendy Ponce City Market.

All the planning in the world can’t top a surprise spontaneous trip for desert.

Make your plans, but always leave room for magic.