Due to spreading myself too thin and my total inability to use the word “No.” I have managed to confuse and/or create new and uncomfortable relationships up and down the U Street/Logan Circle/Dupont Circle area.
The Gap-wearing hippies I mentioned some time ago (you know the ones who have asked for 6 revisions and have more recently began sending me other existing yoga studios’ logos to copy) have been calling me like they have a baked birthday cake for my dead son. Their urgency is freaking me out. Their lack of couth is admirable. Their readiness to rip people off is shocking. Their ability in leaving so many phone messages is unnerving.
(Someone write them and tell them I can’t help them any longer. They’ve taken this to level abusive).
No.
The other yoga studio? Hell, I’m just now starting to drop the ball on. (Though it hasn’t been that long). I should just write and explain that after the project shifted from design to production, I’m not the right person for the job. I should have just said,
I don’t do HTML templates. In fact, I sort of suck at it. I’m more of a designer. I should just stick to that.
But I did not. I was just sort of thinking maybe I’d grow a new me who is in fact great at HTML templates.
(She’s not sprouting).
I watched a movie once. It’s by far one of my all-time favorite films. It’s called You Can Count on Me. I think I liked it most because of my instant fondness and affinity for the main, female character. There is this one scene where she’s talking to a priest after having an affair with her married boss (who has a pregnant wife at home) and having a relationship with a man who wants to marry her but whom she is rather bored with. The priest is asking her why and when, basically trying to understand how it is he can help her. He says to her:
Why did you do it then?
And she answers, as if realizing it for the first time herself:
I felt sorry for them. Isn’t that stupid?
Her saying this, I can assure you, doesn’t mean in any way that she feels these people whom she’s invited into her life are lesser than she. Sometimes it’s not what is said, but where what is said is placed. (I’m explaining this as I don’t want people to directly parallel my saying yes to every job relationship that comes my way because I feel sorry for them. There’s a lot more to it than that.) It’s more of a realization that she’s not all that, that her being there doesn’t help them at all. That, in a way, her playing an active but complacent roll is causing everyone (including herself) more harm than good. The scene leaves one wondering if the relationships she’s created are a mere guise, helping to distract her from taking control herself.
Anyway, the scene has a level of desperation and sadness to it. There’s a feeling of remorse and shame. She gives the impression of having little to no control over the events unfolding around her. The story is about real-life struggles-struggles we can all relate to. It made me feel better knowing that there are others who have trouble being strong about the little things-the chores in life. That’s what life is ulimately made up of—thousands of little things we need to finish and do, held together by even smaller things, stress-division. And, for me, It’s the little things which are easiest to relate to yet the hardest to confront or control. I guess you could say that I loved this movie for waking me up to this.
So ever since then, not only do I have a really huge adoration for Laura Linney but I’ve been trying to figure out a way to change the one thing about me I have never been able to help and that’s my inability to say no and a many yes’s ability to create turbulence. I need to realize that I can’t do everything. And that if I think I can do everything I will eventually lose site of everything and end up old and alone, fat, poor, and married to a hundred cats.
Mihow 
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