Advice from a small town girl

It’s time to change my theme song.

This realization came to me as I was driving to Spokane last week.

I don’t know why epiphanies only seem to happen when I’m doing something that makes it impossible to write it down so as to remember it later. It would be nice if I could remember it later. It would be nice if I could remember anything later. Fortunately, I recently discovered that my smarter-than-me phone will record my thoughts, if only I can remember which app to select.

At any rate, I know I’ve said often that my theme song should be “I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No,” but it suddenly occurred to me that “no” isn’t what I can’t say.

I can’t say “I can’t.”

I am, apparently, incapable of allowing myself to appear incapable.

And you know that silence that falls during a meeting when someone says the organization needs a secretary, chairperson or general dogsbody?

I seem also to be incapable of allowing that silence to continue for longer than a few seconds.

I’m not sure if it’s just part of that whole nature abhors a vacuum thing, or if it’s that I suffer from the misguided belief that I can do everything.

So, once again, I have managed to overload myself to the point of not being able to function at all.

I suspect that saying “I can do that” is just as much of an addiction as my problems with food.

Just another avoidance technique.

I’ve been avoiding something for so long, I can no longer even remember what it is. Or was. I wonder if it’s even relevant anymore.

When I wake in the morning, all I can think about is the long list of things I must achieve in the next 12 hours or so. There’s no time to check in with my body on how it feels today or what it might need.

A few weeks ago, I must confess, I was feeling as though this carefully constructed house of cards was crashing down around my ears. It only takes one card out of alignment to reveal just how fragile all our plans can be.

That was the day I woke up in the wee hours of the morning to a throbbing pain in my jaw and a somewhat unusual look to my face.

When I added that to the sharp pain in my rear from sciatica, all of the uncertainty of being a new business owner (and I do mean that I am what’s new in that equation – I’ve never done this before), and my propensity to say “sure, I’ll take the lead on rejuvenating Old Town Hall” and “well, if no one else will be the secretary at Quilt Club or the Chamber of Commerce . . .”

You get the picture.

I suspect that the theme song I’ve been dancing to lately is “I Can Do Anything Better Than You Can.”

But I’m going to start looking for a new one.

Perhaps “Silence is Golden.”