I make lots of plans. Each one of them is a gem. It looks so good on the first take, zooming through the stratosphere, guaranteed to be a big hit. I can see the money rolling in and then I won’t have to go to my bank manager and ask for a topping of the loan which is already well overdue. I can see people pointing to me as I walk past and say, see that guy, that’s Vohra, made a million with his brilliant ideas, like that hotmail guy who was in town this week. Great plans, really, full of potential and ready to take the world by storm.
But my plans always get into stormy weather. Either they break a wing or go into a nose down dive and end up looking like one of those crumpled light planes in those news pictures you see after they have crashed on the ground, one little hopeful tail sticking up out of the debris. I know the feeling.
Like this plan I had last month. It was one of those hundred percent surefire things and the people who were interested in it had three meetings with me and it was now just a question of signing the deal. So, I am already planning how to spend the money and then what happens, the big chief has to leave for London, the chap who knows the financier gets flu and the contact I have says let’s put it on hold and now it has been six weeks and I am the one out in the cold.
Think of it. There are people out there who have plans that just take off. A couple of meetings and everything jells into place, their principals do not get flu or sudden desires to swan off to London and spoiling all these wonderful plans. They break even in the first three months, make profit from then on and shift from their apartment to a villa and buy a car with a computer and go from Saharanpur to St. Moritz for their vacations.
Me, well it is like Mr. Lennon said, life is what happens to me when I am making other plans. I don’t know what category you belong to but I have this sneaky feeling that there are others like me whose plans either just sit in the ground, or go up ten odd feet then bump back on earth and fold up. For us types, let’s face it, there is really nothing wrong with the basic idea we are just not lucky, we just don’t belong to the plan brigade.
The one problem it does cause is one of credibility. For example, if I turn to my wife and say, I have an idea she makes these rude little sounds in the lower part of her throat. Then she leaves the room. I have mentioned in passing that it isn’t polite to leave the room when the husband is talking but it hasn’t had much impact. Every now and then I happen to say that I have this plan and it is certain to work and once we are rich she can shop to her hearts content and never have to avoid calls from the credit card companies and she takes it very badly indeed. Her face pales and she grips the end of the chair and says, not again, please let’s just bumble along in our present desperate manner, no more plans, anything but plans.
See what I mean, we failed plan types don’t get support. Dash it, at least give us some dollop of praise for trying. So, okay, some of them come unstuck and some don’t even start but how do you know that one day one of these babies will not pan out and become a high flyer. Who’ll be laughing then?
That’s why I say to all of you whose plans are doing the dirty, keep them coming, you never know what’s around the corner.
