My
wife was coming up on a special birthday and it was up to me to plan activities
that would make the day memorable. But
it’s always a challenge to do something that is as good as your desire to do
something big. The best things in life
happen naturally and unscheduled. When
you plan it, it becomes a project.
My
first thoughts about making it a grand day centered around what she’d like to
do, cost, and other constraints, such as, “What to do with my kids?”
You
realize that some of the wildest things, like jumping out of an airplane, no
longer seem possible once you’re no longer a naïve and over-confident teenager
or young adult. You also realize you
can’t just go off on a 10-day run to an exotic location when you have two young
kids. And you also realize that some
things that you would want to do have already been done by that person.
But
it turns out the things that I kept coming back to do, in my mind, involved the
outdoors. I thought going sailing around
New York City would be cool. So, after
much deliberation and research, I purchased two seats with a sailboat
company. Unfortunately, the weather
didn’t cooperate. It rained on most of
her birthday.
Plan
B was called into action.
We
went to three different museums and saw some cool exhibits and explored the
cultural side of our lives that we both cherish. We then enjoyed a nice dinner at a
well-known, high-end restaurant.
She
was a good trooper about turning 40 in the rain. We rescheduled the sail-boating for another
day, though I suppose you can’t reschedule a birthday.
Maybe
we have it all wrong about how we live our lives. Instead of making a few days out of the year
special, just because the calendar says they should be, we should look to make
our ordinary days a little more special.
Some may even turn out to be spectacular. Randomness trumps planning when it comes to
having fun.
Then
again, a little planning goes a long way.
I
went to buy her a cake, to be served the day before her birthday. The kids wanted to help celebrate her
birthday so we decorated the house in a way only a five and eight-year-old
would (I had to talk my son out of using smoke bombs) and we prepared a
perfectly imperfect celebration. But
when I went to buy a nice cake, I found our local bakery lacking. I then went to a cute cupcake place, but they
were closed. I went to our supermarket,
but their cakes are too big and too unspectacular.
We
went in a different direction. We bought
Entenmanns’s mini-donuts and struggled to stick a 4-0 candle into two of
them. She loved it, but I suppose better
planning would have yielded the right cake.
On
the day of her birthday, I wanted to get flowers, ones that I thought she would
love. I couldn’t go to the supermarket
counter. I needed a florist. I searched my iPhone for nearby ones and it
turned out a bunch that came up were delivery services. But I wanted to go on site and pick something
nice out.
The
one that was closest to me happened to be closed for some unknown reason. The paper clock sign on the door indicated
they’d be back in 40 minutes. But I
couldn’t wait. So I called an order into
an online vendor and had them deliver hydrangea in a vase. But she wouldn’t get to see them until the
end of the day, when we returned from our city day-trip.
The
funny thing about big birthdays is I can’t fully remember where I was or what I did when I turned 18, 21, 30, or 40. What did I do on New
Year’s Eve 15 years ago – or this past year?
It’s
not that I didn’t have fun with people important to me, nor is it that I just
have a bad memory, but it all seems like a blur. The things that mean the most to me are
things I try to repeat – going to the beach, watching a baseball game, seeing a
movie, reading a book, eating a good meal, inhaling chocolate, going to the dog
run, fooling around with my kids, going to a comedy show, and all the things
that make life feel good and substantial.
Planning
a great day has its pitfalls and rewards.
I want to make a greater effort to infuse the “special” into the ordinary
day and maybe out of those days will come the fireworks of life.
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Brian
Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and
not that of his employer, the nation’s largest book promoter. You can follow
him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He
feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by
BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2013
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