Remember this conference I couldn’t decide about? I decided to go.
Have I ever written about Yes-Life here? No? Well, when I was in grad school I kept accidentally acquiring fabulous new ways to spend my time. Okay, fine, they weren’t all fabulous, but some of them were lucrative. Okay FINE 12 dollars an hour isn’t lucrative, but whatever. Opportunities for jobs and internships and classes came my way, and every semester or so I had a big freak-out about whether I should turn down said opportunity because I just Didn’t Have The Time.
Pro and con lists were made. Anxious discussions were foisted upon friends, family, and that poor, poor boy of mine. Tears were shed. Decisions were made, then backtracked, then made again. More tears. More lists.
One semester, I had another internship opportunity that I was too busy for. I started to make the lists and the spreadsheets and do my usually mucking around in indecision, but after a few days I got sick of myself. I decided to just say yes. Yes. That’s it. Yes. The rest will work itself out. And it did.
I won’t say I’ve taken this on as a life philosophy or anything, but anytime I find myself wallowing in a decision for more than a few days, I remind myself that it’s easier to say yes. The anxiety is in the deciding, not in the doing.
So I just-said-yes to ALA, and tomorrow I leave for Chicago. All things go, all things go. My strategy is to have fun, to make the trip feel professionally worthwhile, spend as much time as I can with my favorite people, and come home with zero free books. Because I’m moving. And I figure I’ll come home with at least four or five more books than I aim to, so if I aim for zero, I’ll minimize the damage.
Plane reading, you ask?
- The Still Point of the Turning World by Emily Rapp (one of my only remaining library books… more on that later…)
- Roomies by Sara Zarr & Tara Altebrando (it’s good to have friends in high places. and by high places I mean, who went to BEA)
- Jessica Darling’s It List by Megan McCafferty (aiming for zero, but yet hoping beyond hope I can read this on my flight home…)