Earlier this week, I set out to walk first thing in the morning, with the intention of knocking out a fair portion of my 10K step goal. While I’ve been at that daily goal for a little while, I’ve been trying to move more steps to one long walk earlier in the day.

I didn’t really set out to walk the equivalent of a 5K, which is exactly what I ended up doing. My previous longest walk had been around 2 miles; I cleared 3.2 miles and knocked out nearly 80% of my daily step goal in one long walk. It felt really great to pull that off, but I hadn’t intended that as my goal when I walked out the door. In fact, I do that a lot, really; I walk out the door, having a vague idea of how far I want to walk, but end up walking farther than I intend.

Mind you, I believe in goals. I’m a girl who likes having a plan. I absolutely believe that if you fail to plan, plan on failing. Most of the time, anyway. So, walking out the door with just a vague idea of what I want to accomplish (some days, not every day) seems to go against that.

But, quite honestly, I did the same thing when I started this journey in the early days of September, 2013. I had a vague idea that I wanted to give weight loss another shot. I knew the general shape of what I wanted to do. But I didn’t over-plan it.

While I believe in planning, I also firmly believe you can plan yourself into dormancy. You can analyze something so much that you freeze and never get around to actually starting what you hoped to accomplish. You can drown in too much information. You can bury yourself in details so deeply that you stagnate.

I know I’m entirely capable of putting so many requirements on something I claim I want to do that I end up never doing it. Sometimes, the best thing any of us can do is just dive in and hope we can swim. Maybe we fling around for a bit before we find our way, but maybe we also learn from that. And that’s really where I’ve been in this journey.

It hasn’t been a perfect chain of doing everything right; it’s been more like a busted roller coaster at times. I’ve gone backwards. I’ve been in danger of quitting. But these are the things I needed to deal with in order to get where I am, now, and where I want to be.

I saw a quote, recently, about being so tied to the destination that we never enjoy the journey; the belief that happiness is the next thing, the next day, the next accomplishment, rather than what we experience today. I’ve had to learn, most of all, to be in the moment and understand that no matter where I find myself in each moment, there’s something worth savoring. That sometimes the rewards and bravery comes with jumping in and not knowing where you’ll end up instead of planning something into oblivion. Sometimes, you just have to take the chance.