Where is your flow chart?

In the early 80's in "introduction to structured programming" ('basic plus' was the operating language being learned.) the teacher disdained that I did not do "flowcharts"...or that when I did do them, I did so only because I had been compelled to turn one in, and it was inevitably produced AFTER I had written the program, and was a reflection of exactly what the program did...but based on empirical observation, not in creative forethought in the outlay of the design. Little did I know at that point in life the serious significance of this defect.


In high school wood-shop, same trouble...I was building the object when the teacher walked up wanting to see the plans. They are in my head, being created as I go. Not acceptable, but the teacher had many students and usually a distraction got me out of the tedious task of going back to the desk and creating a plan.

It was some three decades later in life before it hit me one day that my problem in life was exactly the same as in that computer class, or shop class. I'm not designing it then following the plan...I'm so busy figuring out the plan as I go...its easier just to tell what i did , when i get done. This, despite horrifically hard working sacrificial efforts, has not succeeded in a comfortable, secure, relaxing existence financially speaking. And while it has offered many enjoyed jobs and chores thru the years, it is now in later years when I am already wishing that I did not "have to" work so hard and at so near entry level of a position.

It is now that I'm trying to figure out what to do to get out of this rat race a bit and spend more time at home, and not as demanding of my energy. And I'm discovering...how that all along, and definitely at least now...a plan needs to exist, a "flow chart" that leads to it..a strategy and a work-list...or step by step....and moving towards it as surely as assembling an unassembled bookcase. I need to be so familiar with the flowchart along the journey that when I reach each desired goal, it is with the feeling of deja vu simply because I've had this in my mind all along the way (just like knowing what the bookcase is to look like).

Ahhh...If I live to be old, I'll have living figured out. Maybe.