Sometimes I call my Dad during my mid-afternoon lunch break to get a little perspective.
He’s a great listener. During my college years, I called him to stress out about everything from homework and roommates to the Problems of our Time and my Future. He’s probably enjoying the break our four-hour time difference necessitates.
That day, my various worries had once again twisted me up into a ball of anxiety. After I tried to unravel them for fifteen minutes, he said, “You’re thinking about this too much.” In one sentence, he summed up my biggest flaw.
I’m a champion over-thinker. I can dissect every aspect of my life—work, health, social life, word choice in a conversation I had yesterday—and find a way it could be done better. I analyze them systemically, identify patterns, and draw conclusions about my own underlying motives. I talk myself into and out of things a lot. I can’t count the number of times during the interview process for KNOM that I talked myself out of coming because I was scared, and then talked myself into it again because I’m scared of not living my life because I’m scared.
This is why I call my Dad; he always tells me when I’m taking things too far. He reminds me to let myself off the hook, to stop thinking and just live.
When I do, great things happen. I move to Alaska, for instance. I learn how to talk live on the radio, how to make mistakes and recover gracefully, even though public speaking often makes me stutter. I take a long walk through the ice fog, and see the tiny crystals hanging in the air catch the sunlight and sparkle, like I’m standing inside a snow globe full of glitter. I put on my only dress, play my favorite songs, and have a solo dance party.
Sometimes I get caught up cataloguing all the possible outcomes, all the mistakes I could make, that I forget that my story isn’t written yet. It’s happening right now, as I type these words. Anything could happen. And I’m grateful for the people in my life who remind me of that.
