Whatever happened to serendipity?

Right ABOUT NOW, PERHAPS WE'RE ALL FEELING A BIT LIKE ELIZABETH Bailey.

Braced for it.

New year. New page. Same story.

Long before 2005 was even a glimmer in the eye, Bailey wasn't too surprised to find that she was already booked well into March. Meetings, travel, presentations planned out end to end.

It's been a long time since she could just sit back and see what chance might bring.

Bailey, 43, is up every morning at 5 for a five-mile run in her South Bay neighborhood. She's back in time to check her first round of e-mail at 6 and get her two young sons ready for school. At work -- she heads her own marketing and communications firm, 2B Communications -- she's "on the phone or writing or in meetings pretty much every day." Evenings, it's homework, husband, dinner, kids' bedtime at 8 and an additional four hours in the home office.

Then it starts all over.

Once, "I was really a take-it-as-it-comes girl. But," she says with down-to-brass-tacks firmness, "life requires more organization now."

By necessity her days have become more focused: shopping at stores where clerks phone to alert her to new goods she might like. Ordering films from Netflix rather than wandering into a theater on a whim. Eyeballing a chain bookstore's "Just Arrived" table on the way to the cleaners and market.

For the culture's many time-crunched Elizabeth Baileys, coping means filtering. Scrolling through Amazon.com recommendations to find a book. Skipping the evening news in favor of a blog. Stripping curiosity down to a Google search.

Yet there's growing suspicion that even with myriad options just a mouse click away, the world's gotten only narrower. Everything's available, but it seems like less.

Bidding on a Bakelite brooch on EBay isn't the same as discovering one at a flea market where you might come upon its priceless story, and the proprietor's. Looking for information online is worlds apart from wandering into a library and picking up a book from a just-vacated carrel or on a cart waiting for reshelving. And there is no tech shortcut to the rush of hearing a haunting scrap of song while in line at a market, a refrain that not only introduces you to music you love but throws open the door to another world.

The more we become members of self-selected tribes with their own newsgroups, catalogs and even TV networks, the less we leave ourselves open to serendipity -- chance discoveries, the unexpected. And the tension grows between the need to control unruly lives and the desire for surprises that are outside control.