“Go for it, and figure the rest out later.”
My husband, Dave, recently posted that on Facebook. I read it again and again. Fourteen times over, to be exact.
Those words are impactful to me. I try to live that way now, but it isn’t always easy for me.
You see, I am a type-A planner. I am someone who likes to be organized. I need schedules and rules, and I like order. I am extremely black-and-white with no room for any gray area.
Living this way makes my life easier.
So, the whole, “We’ll figure it out later” idea? Ugh.
That’s an area where I need some help. Luckily I have the best “figurer outer” ever in my husband. (And no, he is not writing this.)
My husband is the one who gently coaxed me into doing this whole softball thing. As I have said before, when I got the invitation to play again, my immediate reaction was, “Well, of course I can’t. I have a family and a new business. And I don’t have any cleats. And I haven’t picked up a ball in years. And and and …”
I could barely get kids to school on time as my life stood. I had already missed speech therapy appointments for Will. I had missed gymnastics on accident. Quite frankly, there was a day that I kept the kids home from a whole day of school because my schedule just seemed so overloaded. (By the way, they are still alive after missing a day. Oh, the horror. It does help that they can’t figure out what day of the week it is. I just told them it was Sunday. Kidding, not kidding.)
The thought of adding in an extremely high maintenance “extracurricular” activity like softball seemed impossible. And I mean that in the most literal definition. Im-poss-i-ble. It seemed impossible from a logistical standpoint and a scheduling standpoint, not to mention a mental, physical and emotional point of view.
What I did have in my favor is the experience of winging it. Years ago, my husband and I decided to leave what most considered a perfectly happy life — which included our best friends in Chicago — to move away to and start TrAk Athletics. It happened fast. Two days after our house went on the market, it was sold. We took everything we had, moved away from everything we knew, (including an income!) and took a chance to follow our hearts.
If I’m being honest, we might have panicked just a tad. And I do think that for the first three months after we moved to Akron, Dave lived in his robe until 3 p.m. (and that’s only if I called him on it, otherwise it would be all day). We were juuuuuuust a little bit lost.
But, now, two years later, we just celebrated our one-year anniversary at TrAk Athletics and we are absolutely stoked. We trusted our guts and somehow, we figured it out.
We took the same approach to growing our family. We jumped in, feet first (more like head first) and had three kids in three years and, well, the best we could tell each other is, “We’ll figure it out later.” I peed on a stick and it gave me the “PLUS.” I knew I wasn’t about to get un-pregnant with Will when Jack was 9 months old and Grace was only 2. But, somehow (still actually wondering how) we figured it out and the kids are now (usually) happy and 6, 5, and 3.
>Go for it!
Early into my adulthood, there were far too many things I passed up because my type A self couldn’t schedule them easily enough on the calendar. The worry of being out of sorts killed off too many opportunities.
What about you guys?
That girls’ trip that seems impossible?
That family vacation that you really want to take but it seems too daunting?
That self-defense class you want to try but are worried you can’t squeeze it in?
Screw it. Take the leap. Go for it!
You can always figure the rest out later.
