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Travel

WHEN YOUR PLANS HAVE OTHER PLANS

Life Lessons on Logistics

When a seven-day torrential rainstorm hits the Southern California coast, our parched land may appreciate the rain; but that rain migrating east to the Sundance Film Festival has turned into a reinforcement of 73 inches of snow packed onto us Park City revelers. Weather and plans are always precarious bedfellows, for intrepid travelers I believe we are people that visualize outcomes, adventures and people dynamics.

It’s no surprise that we become frustrated by failed plans, but the experience didn’t fail, we didn’t fail. I am siting here writing this from the Delta Sky Lounge at LAX heading to Sundance and my flight has been delayed 3 times already. Talk about frustrating and and unanticipated delays. Outcomes can be refined, plans are fluid by nature, as are fluid by people, by a million micro-decisions. It’s a rare ‘win’ when plans remain the same. It’s stubborn of us to adhere exactly to the vision we had in our head, it’s better that we focus our energy on being flexible with our plans, to be creative, to establish have back-up plans for our plans. This is extremely hard especially for me, as someone who tries to pride himself on being the master of planning. Especially when the plans that get changed are outside of my control, like how those three flight delays made me miss Sundance’s opening night film, The Inconvenient Truth Sequel, but at least I made it to the gala afterwards. The event was called An Artist at the Table where I got to meet to some incredible artists, listen to a moving speech by Amy Redford and have an all around amazing evening.

Last weekend when I was in Manhattan where I had a meeting scheduled, a sudden snowstorm shut down the city like a beautiful thick white coat of velvet, the City ground to a halt! You can either succumb to the bitterness of a failed plan or rally and create a moment of spontaneity or tap into a plan that you have simmering as a back up. Instead of getting frustrated, I called a friend of mine who came over and we ordered room service, shared great laughs, had a few drinks, and once it died down met up with friends at Indochine for dinner and had a great night.

Fast-forward a week and another storm has the potential to hobble my plans at Sundance this weekend. However, I have researched and I have prepared and my plans have plans, but more importantly I am more open to spontaneity than I had been prior! All is good here so far in Utah. Continual fresh snow allowing for great skiing down the slopes at the Montage Deer Valley, all the while taking in the incredible new films and events for Sundance 2017. But hey if a big snow storm comes my way, there is always a movie I can go see! If you are open to it, reality can be a lot more delicious than your plans.