Becca Rowan is a writer and the author of Life in General, a collection of essays about mid-life as experienced by an American woman in the 21st century. Becca loves creating connections by sharing stories on her popular blog.
In everyone's life there are moments which change the direction of your future. Sometimes they are under your control, sometimes they are imposed upon you by fate. The choices you make at these moments can be the turning points which decide your future.
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Pivotal Moment
Yes indeed. This word slips off my tongue far too easily.
Yes, I'll be sure and get all those reports finished by Tuesday (even though it's Monday night).
Yes, I'll be happy to pledge to your disaster relief/homeless shelter/mission trip/fund for wayward pandas.
Yes, I can come to extra rehearsals on Sunday afternoons (even though that's my only free day all week).
Oh, yes.
Some years ago, a friend of mine gave me a promotional pen he'd received in the mail. It was from a local anti-drug coalition, and it had the words "Just Say NO!" imprinted on it in big red letters. "Keep this by your phone," he told me, "and when someone calls and asks you for something, read this to them!"
You know, it actually helped. This was back in the days when telemarketers were calling all the time, and I was a huge wimp about saying "no." Anybody with a programmed sob story could get money out of me. But I started gripping that pen tightly in my hand and screwing up my courage. After the first few times of saying "sorry, I can't donate right now," it got easier and easier. Pretty soon, I was grabbing the phone and saying "I'm sorry, we aren't making any donations on the telephone" before firmly hanging up the receiver.
The yes word still gives me trouble, though, especially when authority figures are involved. "You've got to start telling her no," my husband told me the other day, referring to my boss. "She has to learn that you're not going to accomodate her unreasonableness."
Well, easy for him to say.
However...the other day she made a rather unreasonable request, and I don't think my response was exactly what she's come to expect from me.
"We can make that a goal," I responded in reference to the new deadlines she was requesting. "But I think it's going to be very difficult most weeks to actually make it happen." I had several solid reasons to back me up, and she (grudgingly) allowed that we should "just do the best you can" toward achieving it.
Being a people pleaser is just part and parcel of my personality, and it's the thing that makes saying "yes" so easy. It's not even so much that I want people to like me, it's that I want to feel important and approved of. I genuinely want to help people, I want to be seen as the kind of person who gets things done. When I complete some of these tasks, even though they may have cost me time or money or considerable effort (or all of the above at once!), I feel good about myself.
It means I really can do it all. Mission accomplished.
But, at some point I'd like my mission in life to become more about saying yes to the desires of my own heart. After all, charity begins at home.
Yes, I'll take two weeks off at Christmas time so I can spend more time with my family.
Yes, I'll stop bringing work home so I can spend Sunday nights reading or meeting friends for dinner.
Yes, I'll ask my husband to do the grocery shopping even if I'm not working so I can get my hair done or have a pedicure.
But will I be able to stand firm amidst the continuing onslaught of demands for my time and effort?
Yes, indeed.
Hell, Yes!
Funny topic for me to choose, right? Y'all know I'm no risk taker. Probably the riskiest thing I've every done was walk out of a fancy-schmancy restaurant without paying the check. (long story)
Anyway, I've always played it safe. Chosen the road well traveled by, rather than the untrod pathway. But there have been times when I've been filled with a burning desire to "go rogue" ~ I recall my teenage years when I became an anti-war sympathizer (that would be Vietnam war), and a women's rights activist. But ditching college after freshman year to get married sort of put paid to all my counter-revolutionary tendencies.
The risk taking has remained all in my mind. These days, I dream about tossing aside my job and going bohemian, living off my savings, maybe traveling around the world a time or two. Dusting off those novels gathering dust on my "C" drive. Living the life of the artist...
But I know I'll never be brave enough to take the necessary risks to make that happen. After all, I was raised to be responsible and practical, to be safe and sound. Alas, after 50 some odd years, those are hard habits to break.
How about you? Are you a risk taker? Or not?
Remember this movie starring a young Tom Cruise, and that famous scene of him sliding across the floor in his tighty-whities, playing air guitar? That was quite a risky (or risque!) move, wasn't it? What's the riskiest thing you've ever done? What risky think would you like to do? What's a risk you're just too afraid to take (although you really want to?)
Write about ~
Taking Risks
January is half gone, and I suppose I've settled back into my usual winter time routine. There's work (and lots more of it than usual for this half of the family), rehearsals for various and sundry musical things, playing indoor games with the dogs since it's so difficult to get a decent walk in these days (hide and seek is the current favorite). My guilty pleasure TV show is back on, and so are some of my favorite dramas. Although I don't really like winter, I like the way it gives me good reasons to hibernate. There must be a bit of grizzly in me, because I love nothing better than digging in during these long winter nights, pulling on my fleecy pants and flannel shirts, making hearty soups, stews, and casseroles for dinner, brewing pots of strong, dark coffee. We see the sun about once a week on average around here and on the other days the sky is do heavily leaden with clouds, I fear it will fall on my head if I venture outside. So when I do have to emerge from the cave, especially for errands and trips to the store for essentially boring items, I have a tendency to become as cross and cranky as any ol' black ba'ar.
A lot more writing happens in winter. After quite a lapse, I've gotten back into the habit of doing morning pages, and I'm once again amazed at they way this exercise jumpstarts the creative process, so I sometimed end up with three pages of ideas for things I want to write about ~ when I have the time, of course.
A lot more reading gets done in winter, too. Although so far this year I've been enmeshed in a huge potboiler of a novel, which I started before we left Florida, and finally finished just today. (Well, it was 674 pages long!) But now I expect to start flying through the bookstack that's been waiting patiently for me, starting with Lit, the latest installment in Mary Karr's memoir-able life, which I picked up from the library today. I have to read it quickly, because apparently it's in "great demand" and I have it on loan for 10 days only.
I've been trying to keep up the exercise program too, and now that I've found a series of workouts I can do at home I'm lots more successful in making a habit of exercise. Going out to a gym is just not my thing - especially in winter. (My friend M. has been going to Curves three times a week at 7:00 a.m. for the past four years! Can't imagine doing that...)
Life has settled into it's normal routine here chez Becca. I'm appreciative of normal, especially when confronted with news of horrendous disasters like the Haitian earthquake. I'm happy to be settled in my old house here where the earth, though cold and frozen, stands perfectly still every day.
How about you? Are you all settled into the new year?
