THE BEST LAID PLANS

The morning started with that jittery kind of hope that feels like a soft drumline under your ribs. You know the vibe. A fresh sunrise bleeding orange over the neighborhood roofs. Birds chirping like they finally decided to unionize and commit to overtime. And in the middle of it all stood Jessa, clutching her planner like it was a holy relic.

Today was supposed to be her reset day. The day everything aligned. The day she stopped spiraling from one half-finished thought to another. The day she finally got her life together.

Or so she thought.

Her plan was straight up Type-A perfection: wake up at seven, do the fancy meditation she bookmarked on YouTube three weeks ago, hit the gym, grab groceries, clean the apartment, nail her meeting prep, and finish the night with lavender tea and self-respect. She even wrote “You got this” at the bottom of the list, which felt corny but powerful, like manifesting but with a stationary addiction.

But the thing about plans is they have the personality of a toddler. They do what they want. And Jessa’s plan woke up and immediately chose violence.

🌧️ 1. The Day Trips on Its Own Shoelaces

Her alarm went off at seven. Technically. But she heard it in the way you hear a faraway flute in a dream. So she hit snooze with the confidence of someone who believed snooze minutes didn’t count toward the time-space continuum.

Next thing she knew, it was 9:43. Her hair looked like a bird's Airbnb. The meditation video quietly shuffled itself into the “Later, clown” category. And the gym? The gym evaporated like it had never existed.

Jessa muttered at her own reflection, popped a hair tie into place, and declared, “Okay. New plan.” Then she crossed off the first three items and pretended the list looked the same.

Cool. Adaptable. Resilient. That’s what she told herself.

She didn’t believe it, but she told herself anyway.

🍳 2. Breakfast Betrayal

She headed to the kitchen to at least make a healthy breakfast. Something balanced. Something that said, “My life isn’t a whole circus.” But the universe must’ve been in a chaotic-gremlin mood because when she opened the fridge, she was met with two sad strawberries, half an onion, and oat milk that had started curdling into a new personality.

She sighed, grabbed the last frozen waffle, and dropped it into the toaster.

A few minutes later the toaster didn’t pop so much as it exploded into a crisp cloud. Smoke whooshed up like she summoned a demon through breakfast incompetence. The fire alarm wailed. Her cat shot under the couch. Jessa whacked the toaster unplugged, waving a dishtowel like she was trying to chase off a ghost.

When the chaos settled, the waffle was charcoal dust.

“I hate it here,” she whispered.

Then she added “Buy toaster” to the bottom of her planner, underlining it twice.

🚗 3. The Errand Odyssey

With a growling stomach, she headed to the grocery store anyway because she was committed to at least one part of the plan. But the universe, still vibing like a chaotic DJ, had queued up her next misadventure.

Her car didn’t start.

Dead battery.

She stared at the steering wheel. The steering wheel stared back. They both understood the betrayal.

She slammed her forehead into the wheel with the gentle force of someone who was exactly one inconvenience away from screaming into the void.

Her neighbor, Martin—the kind who always wore socks with sandals and a too-cheerful grin—walked by.

“Car trouble?” he asked, as though her slumped posture didn’t already confirm it.

“Yep.”

“I’ve got jumper cables.”

Bless sandals guy.

With a squeal and a cough, the engine came to life. Jessa practically saluted Martin. Then she drove off praying the battery didn’t die mid-lane like some tragic sitcom B-plot.

🛒 4. The Grocery Store Plot Twist

The grocery store was packed. Everyone and their ancestors decided to shop at the same time. Jessa grabbed a cart that insisted on drifting left like it had strong political opinions. She wrestled it into the produce aisle, feeling her sanity peel away like an onion layer.

She tried to grab apples.

An entire pyramid collapsed.

She froze. Another shopper glanced over, made eye contact, then just slowly turned their cart around and left.

Jessa started picking them up one by one, apologizing to no one in particular. A kid watching her giggled. Great. She had become the store entertainment.

Then, midway through recovering apple number eighteen, she bumped into someone. Literally. She turned and saw a guy with warm brown eyes and an apologetic half-smile.

“Sorry,” he said, holding a fallen apple. “Yours?”

“It’s... hard to claim them at this point,” she said. “They’re basically community apples now.”

He chuckled. “Rough day?”

“You have no idea.”

“I kinda might,” he said, nodding at his own cart—a disaster of mismatched items, half-crumpled list floating inside, a pack of cookies somehow opened. “If it makes you feel better, my cart is having an identity crisis.”

And against all expectations, she laughed. Like a real laugh. One that cracked something open in her chest.

They started talking. Light, easy, accidental. His name was Ryan. He was friendly but not too much, funny with good timing, and had a vibe like he read books without bragging about it.

For a moment, nothing felt wrong. For a moment, the day wasn’t a flaming disaster. It was just two strangers bonding over mutually ridiculous circumstances.

But then Ryan glanced at his watch.

“Oh no. I’m late for a call. But hey—” He tore a piece from his receipt and scribbled a number. “In case you want to finish the rest of your apple pyramid story over coffee sometime.”

She blinked. “Yeah. I think I’d like that.”

He left with a wave. Jessa didn’t move for a second. Then she looked at the number and smiled like a doofus.

Suddenly the day felt a lot less cursed.

☕ 5. The Meeting Meltdown

But the universe wasn’t done.

Jessa still had a meeting to prep for—a big one. The kind that decided whether her project proposal moved forward or got yeeted into corporate oblivion. She raced home with groceries and new hope buzzing in her pockets.

She planned to rehearse her pitch. She planned to review her slides. She planned to take the day back.

But her internet had other plans.

It flickered. Then blinked. Then straight up died.

She groaned loud enough to scare her cat again.

After twenty minutes of unplugging, re-plugging, refreshing, resetting, and bargaining with the router like it was a moody deity, she gave up and used her phone hotspot. The connection was slower than her emotional healing, but it worked.

Kinda.

Her video froze multiple times during the meeting. At one point she was stuck mid-sentence with her mouth open like a confused goldfish. Another time the audio cut out and her boss mouthed something that looked like “Are you good?”

It was chaos.

But she kept going.

And hilariously, that messy persistence worked. Her boss ended the call with, “Despite… all that, this is solid work. Let’s move it forward.”

She slumped back, drained but relieved.

🌙 6. When the Day Finally Shows Its Cards

By the time the sun dipped, Jessa sat quietly on her couch, wrapped in a blanket, sipping hot chocolate she didn’t plan for but absolutely needed.

Her planner lay open beside her. Almost nothing had gone the way she wrote it. The day had ricocheted like a pinball off one obstacle after another.

But weirdly, she felt okay.

Her meeting succeeded.

Her groceries were stocked.

Her car still lived.

She had a stranger’s number in her pocket.

And she had proof that even on the most chaotic, sideways, ridiculous days, she could still land somewhere soft.

She closed her planner, tapped the cover once, and whispered, “Maybe the plans aren’t the point.”

Her cat hopped into her lap.

She smiled.

Even a sideways day can end warm.