How many shades of heather does one person hold?
I mean heather as in an oyster color. I didn’t want to use “shades” and the g-word in my title as I’m already disappointing scores of Google searchers who are here due to a shoe fetish.
I am currently in the process of trying to make a HYOOGE life decision. In my head, which is a strange place, nothing can move forward (like buying a new house in a better school district or signing up for the GRE) until the decision is 100% made and zipped up in the irrevocable decision box.
I pride myself on being able to see all sides of most issues. If you need a Devil’s Advocate, I’m your woman. (Do you ever wonder if the devil really needs advocates? If yes, and it’s a high paying position, I’d like to put in my resume.) (Call me, Lucifer!)
But, if the issue is something the directly impacts me (not my kid or my family or friends), there is only black or white.
I had the opportunity to spend an hour on the phone with a Life Coach (hi Marste!) and outlined my two choices. (BTW – this is something I highly recommend. I cannot speak positively enough about how wonderful that hour was.)
After talking about what it would mean to not choose the Big Change and finding out that I am remarkably mature and insightful (paraphrase), I also found out that maybe I don’t have to make it a Big Choice all at once. I can keep on living my life as I move towards the center.
As I was talking about what I do with my time, I prefaced a lot of what I was saying with “I might be crazy” because I get told that sometimes. I’m busy. I work a pretty intense job (actually, two currently), I write (not as much as I think I should), I’m training for a half ironman, I have an almost-three-year-old, and a husband, and a few friends. I’m starting dance classes next week and I am, with the help of Rosetta Stone, teaching myself Swedish. I’m co-chairing a cookbook project for an online group I’m in. I’m working on a research project and eventual paper and maybe presentation with someone who makes me look like a lazy slacker (love you, PSM!).
I am trying to do more things that scare me (see above re: dance class).
I am trying to travel more (see you soon, Chicago!), write more, be more. I am all about more.
I’m seldom about less, unless you’re talking about less social interaction. Then I’m all about the less.
I don’t really know how to do less and stay functional. If you gauge busy on a scale of 1-10, my preference for optimal life-satisfaction and productivity is right around an eight.
If I’m not full up, then there is room for discord and anxiety and those creeping little thoughts that are not helpful.
However, after the hour with Marste, I committed to try to find a center and to seek my balance in something different from left-braining with intensity all day and right-braining with equal intensity the rest of the time.
I am going to look for small steps and resist the go big or go home attitude. I can be full without running full-tilt at whatever the next Big Choice is. Theoretically. (When I decided that the next Big Choice was a baby, I devised spreadsheets, created optimal timelines, charted ALL sorts of things, created a super secret blog about conception and then pregnancy, and read every book I could get my hands on. I won at pregnancy up through the positive result on the pregnancy stick. THEN the variable introduced into my planning made everything else go haywire.)
There’s only one real problem with this. I’m not sure how to look at the heather-colored spaces between. I might need a live-in life coach (note to self: add that line to the sister-wife job description currently posted) to give me more feedback on a daily basis.
My goal though, as always, is to feel good about the decisions I’ve made and completely own them. And also to be completely badass.
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