Day Twenty-Six

I think I have caught up to the right number of days, no? Yes? Who cares.

I have this problem that when someone asks me if I'd like to do something with them, I say yes right away, and then end up canceling later and totally pissing them off. But you see to me, it sounds like so much fun! So of COURSE I want to! When I say yes, I'm saying "that sounds awesome!" but what the other person hears is "yes that is exactly what I would like to do and I am putting it in my day planner right now with permanent ink."

I guess I didn't really realize how much I was affecting people when I'd turn them down at the last minute. They'd text or phone me or whatever to confirm that we were doing such-and-such and I'd be like, oh. NO. Oops. And you know what I found out? That my friends and family started to make backup plans because they knew I would probably bail. When Tracey told me that, my heart sunk.

But my turning point was in early 2010. I was running a long training run with Lora one Saturday morning. She was training for Boston and she had invited me to go with her for practically free! So we were discussing the trip during that run and she nervously brought up a conversation she had had with our friend Alain. He warned her that just because Suzy told her that she's going to Boston with her doesn't mean she really is actually going, and that I'm notorious for bailing at the last second.

Lora wasn't telling me that to make me feel bad, she really was simply concerned that she'd have to go to Boston by herself.

I was horrified. It was like when I gained a bunch of weight when I was pregnant with Freddy and then all of a sudden one day caught a glimpse of myself in a mirrored window. I was like, whoa, something needs to change.

So I stopped saying, "that sounds awesome!" and started saying, "I'd love to do that, but I need to check my calendar first. Can I get back to you?" And what essentially ended up happening was all of a sudden had no life because I was too afraid to commit to anything for fear of bailing at the last second. Kinda sucked. But as time went by I figured it out, and people started trusting me and the plans I was making with them. But boyyyy, was that a humbling experience.