Saying “YES!” to bringing two of my little helpers with me to work.
Turns out, saying yes is pretty stinkin’ fun.
I was on my way to a family photoshoot recently, and I started getting that nervous excited feeling on my drive. I had done the work and put in the time ahead of the session to make sure that it was going to go exactly as I (and more importantly, THE FAMILY) envisioned: I visited the location again to make sure nothing had changed, I checked the lighting to make sure the time we picked was still good since a couple months had gone by since initially booking it, I emailed my pre-photoshoot rundown, I charged my batteries, cleaned by lenses, erased my SD cards… But despite all that effort and planning and thinking ahead, I still had the nervous butterflies. What if I was awkward? What if I froze and just couldn’t explain my vision? What if there were a million other people at the location, and I started really feeling like an imposter holding a camera? I could go on…
It got me thinking that, as we get older and move through life as adults, the times that we get that nervous, butterflies in your belly, “I’m excited but also kinda scared how this is gonna go!!” feeling starts to happen less and less. The list of things we’re doing for the first time becomes shorter and shorter. We’ve had the first date. We’ve asked the hard questions. We’ve gone to the interview. We’ve bought the big thing we’ve been saving up for. Basically -- we’ve gotten comfortable.
That’s how I’d describe the last few years of my life. I got comfortable in my routine. And actually having added three children to our family within the last five years only increased that feeling of a comfy routine. We went out less. We relied on naps to keep us at home and saying no to things. We settled for the ordinary stuff that kept our lives running smoothly. Heck, we even went through a pandemic! So let’s give ourselves some grace on the “put yourself out there” front.
But for whatever reason, my third daughter, time away focused on family, and rethinking how I’m living my life made me realize I was cooooooooasting. Majorly. And I wanted a wake up. I wanted to do things that made me feel uncomfortable again. I signed up to be a reader at our church. I volunteered to coach three year olds in soccer. I started a business based on a hobby I had, for the large part of my life, kept a secret. It’s been UNCOMF. But it’s also been amazing. I’m meeting more people than I ever have before. I’m saying YES to things I would have said I didn’t have the bandwidth for before. I’m discovering new parts of my personality and self that I’m not sure I’d have known were there.
So if this sounds like you at all, just know I’m going through it with you. I’m getting comfortable with the idea of living in the uncomfiness. And ya know what? It’s kind of awesome.
<3 Alex