In which I admire my friend Vanessa
My friend Vanessa is a dynamic and fabulous person. She keeps a witty blog (which she doesn't update nearly often enough. Seriously? February 19? Slacker.) She holds down a demanding job, and she is parenting the adorable and dangerously precocious Poodle. And here are the things I love most about her:
She is hospitable. Even though she is still settling in to her home, she threw open her doors to a gaggle of women in January, providing food, drink, and air mattresses to the lot of us. (We used my booksigning in Phoenix as an excuse to see each other.) Vanessa cooked and drove and shopped long past the stage when a lesser woman would have cried for mercy. And when we left, she went for a two-mile hike. OUTDOORS.
Which brings me to the next thing I admire about her--she is fit. Last weekend she called me en route to the gym, and we decided that from now on, when anyone asks me about my fitness routine, I will simply say that I have delegated my exercise to Vanessa. She handles free weights and the tready for me, and I'm pretty sure she's ready to handle the responsibility of running a 5K on my behalf.
Perhaps her most impressive accomplishment is that she has declared 2008 to be The Year of No. I cannot tell you how inspiring this is to me, honestly. I never realized what a pleaser I am until Vanessa sent me a list of characteristics peculiar to perfectionists. And I had all but one. (Perfectionism is something we have in common. This is how I know she's doing a really good job when she works out for me.) Vanessa is taking her perfectionism DOWN by simply refusing anything that doesn't serve her. It's an experiment, and sometimes a difficult one, I think, for a woman who is so energetic and dynamic that she is EVERYBODY'S go-to girl. But she is sticking to it, and instead of restricting her world, I see her emphatic and courteous "NO" is opening it up. Good things are happening for her, and I'm convinced it's because she has made room for them.
So, inspired by her, I have begun my own campaign of NO. Three or four times in the last month I have issued refusals instead of a knee-jerk YES. It's astonishing how easy it is to acquiesce, even when you don't mean it, and amazing how hard it is to stand your ground when you are taking a different road. I am usually the first to turn down things I don't want to do in my personal life, but my professional life is something else. I am, for the first time, in a position where I cannot accept every invitation, even if I wanted to desperately. (Believe me, I know that this is a very GOOD problem to have.) My editor cautioned me once about never letting the business of being an author interfere with the business of being a writer. To that end, I have to keep my calender balanced between the purple scribbles of upcoming events and the broad, empty, white expanses of dedicated writing time. Learning how to do that is proving trickier than I expected, but I am watching Vanessa glide across her tightrope with ease and I'm tiptoeing along behind her.
