say you can

Happy Sunday. Well, so far, I've only made my two page a day goal half of the days. Normally, this would set me to condeming self-talk, but not today. No way, baby. I'm just gonna pick up here and re-focus on making my goal for the rest of the month.

I am learning to cut myself slack. To not be so uptight. It's hard, because I'm a person that likes to stick to my goals. Like at the gym; if I tell myself I'm going to do 45 minutes on the tread mill, then, by golly, wild horses couldn't drag me off before that, even at the 44 minute, 59 second mark. This is not good, because being like that can prevent you from trying new things. Who wants to try something they might not be good at?  Also, I have this freakish belief that I should automatically know how to do basically everything at the first attempt. Dumb, isn't it? But, I'm changing. I'm learning.

Not to blame anyone, but, when I think about it, my grandmother, Memmem, who I spent gobs of time with growing up, was like that. She attempted to learn to drive exactly one time, in her thirties. Her husband was the teacher. He got frustrated and yelled at Memmem. She jumped out of the car and ran off, refusing to ever learn again. For the rest of her life she had to depend on other people to cart her around. This seems especially goofy considering that her husband died when she was only fifty, so if her stubornness was against him, you would think she'd relent and try getting back in the saddle, so to speak. Not so much. Her life was divided into two categories: things she did, and things she did not do. Period. The categories never changed or overlapped, no matter how inconvenient. She cooked. She grocery shopped, She did paperwork. She did not drive cars or boats, despite the fact that she spent every summer on a remote island in Canada. She did not operate machinery, paint walls, sew, decorate, garden, or read books.

Today, as I gaze off into the rest of my life, I ask only one thing. Lordie, lordie, don't let me turn into Memmem. Let me seek ever bigger challenges. Let there be no area in which I'm content to ever say, I can't. And most of all, keep me light of heart, able to laugh at myself and to roll with the punches. Amen.

And speaking of Memmem, tomorrow will be my second story. It involves her. It is called the Halter Top.