A girlfriend took me to a Friendsgiving with a beautiful spread, and a very nice woman at our table had brought her own food in a small Tupperware. “You brought your own food,” I said. I find starting a conversation with a simple unbiased observation of the obvious offers more room to discuss than specific questioning like ‘Are you allergic?’ or ‘Why did you bring your own food?’
“Yes, I am gluten intolerant,” she said. “Among other things.” “I get that,” my friend chimed in. “You just need to stay away from what your body doesn’t love.” As they nodded in commiseration, I glanced down at my plate with three stacked meats, cheese, bread, sauce, and some kind of creamed bean with crispy onion. Apparently I had the digestive system of a golden retriever let loose in the kitchen.
Where it got interesting was when the woman suddenly seemed distressed. She and my friend were looking above them and back into her bowl. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “A leaf blew into her food and she’s afraid she ate it.” I paused long enough to NOT make the next statement, but I said it anyway. “A leaf won’t kill you,” I said. I saw obvious concern on her face. “I mean, are you really worried the leaf will kill you?” I asked. She clearly was. “Look,” I said. “If it’s your time to die, I hardly think it’s going to go down right now. I mean, of all the ways to go, it could happen and if it’s your time, it may happen. But I doubt it.” She looked into her bowl either pondering my deep truths or wishing I would have eaten a poisonous leaf instead of her. As I shoveled another large mouthful of buttery potatoes in my mouth, I thought, lady, if you are so worried the leaf will kill you, don’t sit there letting us worry about it too. Go throw up!. Luckily I left that last part out. But seriously, who wants to do CPR on Friendsgiving?
If you are looking to do some writing:
People ask me all the time if there are benefits to taking a break from writing. I don’t think there are. I am old school and believe we have to write all the time to have the good days and the bad days. If we write intermittently then we write on a bad day and it can feel like all our writing sucks. So I like to have those fantastic, I am the best writer ever days, interspersed with the I suck massive writing eggs days so I have more of a shot not quitting the craft that drives me to live more life every day. Yes that sounds dramatic but I have come to terms lately with the fact that I love writing, love writers who write, and adore people who write books. If you truly love writing, then do some form of it every day.
What I wish someone would create:
A ten - fifteen second cushion in the time space continuum around everything we do. All my fuck ups, break ups, bad decisions, overthinking, underthinking and misunderstandings happen in the 10-15 seconds from the first thought to the action. If there was just an automatic buffer I would stop taking the wrong actions all the time because in that empty space, I would think, “Wait, that’s not my job.” Or “Hold on, that costs too much.” Or “I prefer to bow out of that social engagement.” Instead, we want it off our lists and calendars and so we over manage, people please and then burn out. Over the course of a day, each cushion could add up to easily 15 minutes of lawless ponder time. What a gift.
Technology Tip:
At the very same Friendsgiving where the woman pondered her mortality with the oak tree leaf, I discovered two very capable business women didn’t know that the contacts on their phone could be sorted by category and list. It came up when the woman scanned my Blinq QR code (introduced a few newsletters back) for my contact info, and she said, “This is all well and good but if I am at an event and I meet 15 people, then when I don’t recall their names, I can’t find them in my sea of 3,000 contacts.” I said, “Well make a group and put them all in it right then and there.” She looked at me blankly, “You can do that?” Holy crap, yes! The other woman also was shocked. I showed them the 14 different lists I have of people, including one group called phone contacts which are the people I call all the time, or need to call when I am in the car so I can find them quickly. If you didn’t know this, well, happier day for you! Go make groups and lists in your contacts!
Shameless Plug:
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