The real world never lines up the way you’d like it to. There are always imperfections.

Of course, this is incredibly frustrating – even if you don’t think of yourself as a perfectionist.

This comes to mind because I’m currently working on a yearly budget. And I don’t dream in spreadsheets.

Not to mention that no matter how beautiful a plan looks on paper, the reality is never going to line up to comply with all these magic numbers I now own. So what’s the point of making a plan, if it’s never going to happen that way?

Because it’s about reasoning through things and making choices.

I puzzle through wanting to achieve so much, yet having limited resources. “I’d love to do both A and B, but only have money to do one of them. So which is going to be more important?”

If you think about it, though, that’s just life. We’re always having to decide how we want to spend our money, energy, and time. There’s never enough to do everything.

It comes back to my values. What will make the most difference to the people we serve? Is doing half of A and half of B better than doing one of those completely? Is there something we should delay until we have more resources later?

But even then, reality won’t line up perfectly. And we’ll just do the best we can.

But it was valuable having those discussions.