Do y’all know Kerstin Auer? She’s a regular #iPPP linker, supportive blogger, and all around fun gal.

She writes at Auer Life, is a German-born Canadian, published author, and proud mama of two, and is a regular tweeter.

Say hello to Kerstin!

I did not expect for time to fly by like it did since Greta asked me to write this guest post for her. Write about expectations? Ha! Piece of cake… so I thought. Um… well, five weeks have passed since then and my writing of an exceptional expectational post has not lived up to par!

Not that I don’t have enough to choose from. I could write about what I expected when I read Fifty Shades of Grey or what I expected when my mother-in-law came and visited from Germany after I had managed to avoid talking to her for four years. And then there are always parenting, marriage and our immigration to Canada.

I thought about all those things – and I really could not say what my expectations were. Except for Fifty Shades of Grey; I had really high expectations for Christian Grey’s looks. I envisioned him looking like Christian Bale, so in other words: smoking hot. And then I read the thing about Christian Grey having copper colored hair and I was not happy about that at all. Which brings me to my point – I tend to NOT have expectations.

Why? Because unexpected surprises have proven to be better than expectations, which turn into disappointment.

The best of times is now. That’s what Oprah says and I agree. There are so many things we can’t control and quite a few years ago I decided to give up expectations. It probably was before Oprah even said that – it was right around the time my son got hurt pretty bad.

We were at a pool and he was walking towards me. I was only a few feet away as he slipped and fell onto the back of his head. I ran to him and picked him up. His eyes were open, but they were rolled up all the way into the back of his head and it seemed like forever until the ambulance finally came. I spent a week at the hospital with him after a CAT scan had found intracranial bleeding.

In the end everything turned out alright, but I realized one thing: I had EXPECTED to always protect my children, but this accident taught me that there were so many things beyond my control. Most things were beyond my control, actually.

Ever since then I have taken a different approach at life. Carpe Diem – cease the day and live in the moment. Make it count. Of course I still like to plan ahead and be prepared, but I have no expectations. I give my best and accept the outcome. I think it has enabled me to be more relaxed and find more joy. The most unexpected surprises have been some of the best in my life.

Like that time my husband came home from work and told me the company is introducing some “changes”. There were a few different options available for him and we just went with the flow. In the end he took a payout that enabled us to move to Canada. Not bad, eh?

Or the time I got an unexpected email from a publisher in Germany, asking me if I wanted to write a book for them. They had found me through my immigration blog and the book I had published about our immigration – something I had done for the love of writing, without any expectations attached.

And to come back to my mother-in-law’s visit earlier this year: her and I don’t have a very good track record. As a matter of fact I did not have a problem not being her friend on Facebook or talking to her on the phone for over four years after we moved here. Once she announced her visit for May I decided not to have any expectations about it.

Whatever was to happen would happen – right? I kept an open mind, did not get uptight about it and it actually turned out just fine. Maybe all those martinis I drank a week before her visit when I went on a trip to Toronto with my boss helped keep me relaxed… We actually had a good visit and my husband thoroughly enjoyed his time with her.

It’s not always easy to stay away from expectations, and my most recent excursion into the land of expectations (about Christian Grey’s looks) has been a little reminder of that. Rather than being disappointed when I read that he has copper colored hair I will be much happier when I unexpectedly find out that they cast Christian Bale to play him in the movie. Which I fully expect. Ahem.

You can follow Kerstin on Twitter and her blog. And you may just see her linking up around the blogosphere!