The trouble with planning

I'm too anxious to sleep. I'm anxious about moving back to Wisconsin and missing my friends here and I'm anxious about what comes next in life. Sometimes its hard to be patient and let life do its thing. I want to know here and now what comes next. What job will I get? Where will I be living? When will I get married and to whom? These are all the questions I face as I head back home and the hardest thing for me to do is just be patient and wait and see. I struggle sometimes to just submit, let things work out as they are supposed to.
The biggest lesson I've learned this past year is that no matter how much you plan, life is going to happen how it wants to happen, irregardless of how you want it to be. When I first moved out to the East Coast, I was going to be a teacher. I would have teacher friends and a decent salary and everything would happen as I imagined it. A few weeks before I moved out here, I learned that these things, all my plans, weren't up to me. First, my program get canceled, and then on the day I was supposed to leave, my grandma's cancer rapidly took control and in the next days, took her from this earth. I flew out the day of my grandma's funeral, an interesting way to move out of the state for the first time, as I was dealing with the loss of my grandmother and leaving all my friends behind.
Without the teacher's program, I had to find work, and found it in at the world's largest department store. This was not my plan and I struggled working there, full of arrogance and sadness at my predicament. I would think to myself, "a person like me isn't supposed to be working here. I have a college degree and I find myself scanning items telling people where the bathroom is." But I think that is exactly where I was supposed to be. I learned how to be more humble as I watched my fellow employees go through their days, working to feed their families, in a job that they were so grateful to have.
As I look back now, I see there was a plan going on, just not my plan as I had envisioned it. If I hadn't worked at this large retail establishment, I would have never found my internship. In turn, I finally found what I want to do with my life, work with interfaith non-profits. Through both of those experiences I found some great friends and experienced some great moments that I will cherish. Sometimes the plan you need, isn't the one you want.
Now as I get ready to go back to Wisconsin, I must once again remind myself that all this is part of the plan. I must let life work itself out and remind myself not to stress out too much because not only is it not up to me, but I'll miss out on everything if I'm too consumed with trying to control my life and not live it. I'm sad to be leaving but eternally grateful to everyone who has made this experience so rewarding. I can't say when I'll be back, hopefully soon, but it's not up to me. As I pack up my items and memories, I'm going to keep reminding myself of these lyrics from "Glee" (yep, I'm a nerd) - "Hear me when I say when I say I believe/Nothing's gonna change, nothing's gonna change destiny/Whatever's meant to be will work out perfectly."
As I go on this new journey, I am sad and anxious, but I'm trying my best to also be excited as I look forward to what's coming next.

It's 2 am and I'm not sleepy

Awesome. It's 2 am and I'm not sleepy. I like sleep, a lot, and by not being sleepy, I'm missing out on one of my favorite things, you guessed it, sleep. It could have been all that Diet Dr. Pepper I had with dinner. My sister had some and was able to fall right asleep, but I guess that's because she didn't have four glasses, like me. Some day I'll have self control...
I wish I were one of those creative types, that could write down some song lyrics or come up with a short story, but all my poems growing up were of the rhyming sort and I'm not sure how well that flies once you reach 23 and your name isn't Shel Silverstein. (Random fact: his son went to my high school.) I was in a creative writing class my senior year of high school. For our last paper we had to write a short story and read it aloud to the class as our final. I remember basing mine off of an episode of Doogie Howser, M.D. In the episode, Wanda's (Doogie's girlfriend) mother has died (from cancer, if I remember correctly, I was only like 10 when I watched it). She is having trouble saying goodbye so she ties a note to her mom on a balloon and sends it off into the sky. I'm pretty sure I hardcore plagiarized that, because their was certainly a death and a balloon goodbye in my story.
I also remember I was sick the day I was supposed to read my story so my friend Claire read it for me. I'm pretty sure I feigned being sicker so I didn't have to read it (most people in school had trouble telling us apart anyways). Aww, memories. At one point I did write my own work, including this awesome poem in elementary school in our Halloween Card contest. I should have won first place, not third. I was cheated, I tell you, because that was a quality poem. I'm surprised I never got a call from Hallmark....