Yes, I can.

As I sit here, my fingers poised over the keyboard ready to type, I'm hesitating.  Because I'm about to tell you the same thing I've written probably a million times before in all these years I've been writing this blog.  And that is -- I've been busy. Insanely busy, as it were.

I hesitate because I don't want to sound like I'm complaining.  The busyness comes from the fact that I like my job, I am fortunate enough to have a wealth of dear friends I work hard to keep up with and see often, and a vast variety of interests and curiosities that I do my best to engage.  These are all good, great, wonderful things and I wouldn't trade them.

But as these things go, everything always seems to happen at once and lately my happenings have been so rampant that I barely have had time to catch my breath.  In fact, it was when I woke up on Saturday morning, tired, my voice hoarse from the prior night (read: week) staying out too late, my head slightly foggy from the previous evening's wine, that I realized, particularly as I thought about the plans I'd made for that very evening as well, that I would never catch my breath unless I actually made time it.

So I canceled my Saturday evening plans, blaming my sore throat.  I still made it to my morning yoga class, I kept my appointment at the Apple Genius Bar, dropping off my broken MacBook to be repaired. And then I promptly went home.  I ignored the cleaning that needed to be done, the errands I definitely needed to get out of the way.  Instead I decided I was just going to hang out with, well, me.  I soaked up the sun on my back porch, working a bit on my slow to get started annual container garden.  Glass of nothing more exotic than seltzer water in hand, I caught up on the many magazines and newspapers that have been piling up in my living room for the past month.  I grazed my way through the dinner hour, moving back inside only when the sun finally set for the day.

I'd like to tell you that I woke this morning feeling like a brand new person, all sorts of refreshed, but the truth is, I was still sort of tired.  I met a friend for a long overdue brunch where we swapped stories about both the good things and the frustrating things going on in both of our lives.  After she and I parted ways, I managed to run most of the errands I'd put off the day before (though I didn't make it to the grocery store. Food. Pfft.  Who needs that for the upcoming week, right?) and as I sit here at my desk, typing right now, I can tell you that I finally don't feel quite as exhausted as I did when this weekend was getting started.  This is a good thing; particularly as Monday morning is right around the corner.

For years I've been saying that I need to say no more often, that I shouldn't live at such a hectic, frenzied pace. The thing of it is though, and what I've finally come to recognize, is that I like doing all of the things.  Truthfully I've been this way my whole life.  Yes, I want to go to the theater with you, yes I want to check out that band you have an extra ticket for, yes I want to go to that literary reading, yes I'd love to meet you for dinner and check out that new restaurant.  Yes to the writing group, yes to the yoga classes, yes to the book club, yes to the dinner parties, yes to the museum outings.  Yes to the road trip, yes to the weekend getaways. Yes to old friends and the many mini reunions, yes to meeting new friends and laughing over brand new jokes now shared.  

I suppose I made up my mind many years ago (when I was busy asking my Mom to sign me up for ballet AND jazz AND piano lessons AND horseback riding AND 4-H club AND lacrosse AND the school council AND the school musical....) that I wanted to try virtually every thing that I had the option of trying.  Somewhere buried deep in my soul was a voice I didn't even recognize yet. All I knew was that that voice?  She was saying YES.  To the experiences, the challenges, the memories in the making. To the good, the bad, and all the in-between.  Life is here to be lived and while I certainly don't want to make quoting Aerosmith a regular habit, I often feel that I just "don't want to miss a thing."

Sometimes though.  Sometimes I need to remind myself that the best thing, the very thing not to be missed is some quiet solitude; a chance to recharge, reconnect, and take a breath.

So.  How about this?  Let's include a yes to the lazy Saturday, a yes to saying no to invitations out for a week, yes to letting myself sleep in now and then, yes to getting away from it all for a few moments of peace and solitude.

Just a few days ago, a very good friend of mine shared a quote by one of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott.  She says things well, that Ms. Lamott, so I won't try and rewrite what she states so perfectly well herself.  I was glad to read what my friend had shared, for it served as a reminder of exactly what I don't want to happen to my one and only own and precious life.  If I say no, if I turn down an opportunity, I want it to be for the right reasons; my reasons.   

For I have come to accept that I will continue to say yes as often and as readily as I want to, despite my complaints that creep up now and then of being overly tired or stretched too thin.  Because I want my life to be about the yeses.  Every beautiful and delicious second of it that I'm lucky enough to get.

Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you're sixty-five, or seventy-five, and you never got your memoir or your novel written; or you didn't go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid?  It's going to break your heart.  Don't let this happen. 
-Anne Lamott -