27 — Spontaneity and planning-panic
Scheduling is a matter of survival if you want to live here.
There were (and there still are) so many things I needed to adjust to when I first moved to Sweden. You guessed correctly one for sure, the weather. But there’s one that I am, still to this day, constantly banging my head at: the concept of scheduling.
Scheduling is a matter of survival if you want to live here. You’ll need to learn how to schedule your life so much in advance that if you are not a slave to your calendar, you are doing something wrong, at least according to the Swedes. I am not talking about scheduling medical procedures, or big life events, I’m talking about scheduling coffee dates with your friends, playdates with your kids, haircuts, basically anything that can be planned needs to be put in a calendar.
Last May I wanted to sign myself up for an adult swimming course (don’t judge me, I swim like a fool and I’d like to improve on that skill), I called and emailed every swimming pool that offered the service for both English and Swedish speakers and I got the same ‘Sorry, we are fully booked’ reply from all of them. I was told that I could queue for the classes starting the following October. Queuing. That is another one you’ll need to get used to if you want to live in Sweden.
Usually, by the beginning of June, people have already booked their winter break because nothing says summer like planning your Christmas holidays. You guessed it, the same goes for summer whose planning needs to be squared out by February.
Last year, after a proper freakout, I booked my summer travel itinerary in February. I thought I’d give this scheduling mindset another try, because believe me, I try. By August, when I finally had my vacation days, the flights I booked were rescheduled by the airline, rescheduling with it also my travel anxiety giving me just enough time to buffer for an additional 24 hours before I could finally start my vacation.
As you can tell, I am having a hard time adjusting to this shift in mentality and I am still caught by surprise every time I am confronted with this reality - no matter how long I’ve been here.. I will even call the nail salon to ask if the booking app is broken because the first available appointment I get is in May (I am writing this at the beginning of March). So much for wanting to get my nails done that one time a year - well, thank you, I’ll keep them bare.
With restaurants is exactly the same and no Michelin stars are involved in this process. Whenever I tried booking anything in advance, I found out that the closer I got to the date, the more of an imposition it felt like - a crescendo of resentment leading to the final day, the date of the reservation, when I’d rather stay home and read a book than go out to THAT restaurant I thought I so wanted to go to just a few weeks prior.
It’s a circle of unpleasantness so enlighten me if you are a planner yourself. I have tried all the little tricks of buying cute calendars (my partner gifted me one that is about dogs pooping in beautiful places), colorful Post-it notes, and combining them with all the fancy pens one could dream of.
I’m learning that form has nothing to do with my aversion to scheduling tho. It’s all in my mind, and by now, that we have established because all I have done in this essay is show you how incapable I am of adapting this mentality to my life. The thought of having so much structure makes me believe that it’s all just a bunch of chores. I googled ‘Why are Swedes obsessed with planning’ and I got redirected to an expat blog talking about moving to Sweden etc and proceeded then to list all the activities you don’t need to rely on scheduling for, like, walking in nature.
Perhaps all I need to do is surrender and just continue being the awkward Italian who waltzes around her life in Sweden in between bursts of spontaneity and planning-panic.