Sh*t I Say: “Yes, I’ll Do It”

Today is the twenty-fifth day of the April A to Z Challenge. During this month I will be writing blog posts every day (with breaks on Sundays) about the topic “Sh*t I Say” starting with each consecutive letter of the alphabet. This is one crazy project, y’all.

Yes, I’ll do it.

I have a problem.

I say “Yes” too often.

I’ve always been game to try new things (if not new foods) but this has gotten more intense since I started this blog. After all, the blog was borne of the most exciting adventure of my life at that point: a pregnancy. I was 33, an over-sharer, and experiencing the ultimate life-changer. How perfectly that event coincided with the advent of blogging.

Over the years I have become much more curious about people and foods and experiences to be had. I’ve been open to opportunities to travel, to make money, and to receive free laundry detergent. I’ve made wonderful, supportive, hilarious, smart, and useful friends.

And that is because I have been willing to say “Yes, I’ll do it.”

Sometimes that willingness leads to things like this:

A note of editing here. In my list of Forty Things I’ve Done, I note that I caught a wave without dying in the Pacific Ocean. This is true, but I did not stand up on the board. Stewart tried to teach me how to surf multiple times, enough that I have a photo of me somewhere, wearing a wetsuit and holding a board. The very last time I attempted to surf with him, I got caught at the top of a giant wave facing the wrong way. Just as I was about to plummet to certain death, I rolled out of the wave on the back side, and survived. I went back to shore, never to surf again.

Or so I thought. Last week I traveled to the North Shore of Oahu with three other bloggers who are way more apt to say “Yes, I’ll do it” than I am, even. When the concept of a group surf lesson came up, there was enough peer pressure and assurances that this time, it’ll be different, that I caved.

Long story short, I didn’t die. I got up to one knee and caught three waves that way, but I also did get pounded by multiple waves, twice. Over coral. I came away with a badly bruised wrist, but otherwise unscathed.

Mostly, saying “Yes, I’ll do it” leads me to good things, but when I say it too often I wind up overbooked, overwhelmed, and over everything. After Lisa died in November I crawled into a hole of self pity and grief, and either ignored or said “No” to most invitations for the first time in a long time. Once I started to feel like myself again, which was around the end of January, my first instinct was to accept and say yes and show up at every party, but now I am making a supreme effort to carefully consider what activities and projects I join. Because life is short, my time is limited, and I need to say “Yes” to myself a little bit more.