While I’m not flaky — if I tell you I’ll be somewhere, I’ll be there at any cost — anyone who knows me probably reads my “maybe” as a no. If there’s a justifiable reason not to leave my house for an off-schedule peopling, I will find it.
This is not my favorite trait. My “maybe” or “I’m going to try to make it” is not a people-pleaser’s no. It’s more like, “I deeply want to be the person who goes to this event, but I don’t know exactly what to expect from the experience and that jacks up my heart rate. I worry I lack the requisite social skills to get through it with my nerves intact. Am I going to have to find parking? Also, that’s when I usually go to the gym and sometimes my brain simply cannot process an interruption to its normal routine. Anyway, there’s a chance I will be the person who shows up despite all of this. Sometimes I am. I don’t want to give up on myself, so I’m leaving the door open for both of us with this ‘maybe.’”
Last week I went to a talk at Loyola University given by the bestselling author and delightful person R. Eric Thomas. A friend had posted a photo of the event flyer in our book club’s group chat.
It had “maybe” written all over it. The location was listed as a vague-to-us “Fourth Floor Program Room.” No building name, no address, no nothing. Another friend turned up the building name via some solid internet sleuthing, but the fact that the school hadn’t included it in any of their promotional materials told me this was a student-centered event. I imagined myself entering a room sparsely populated with a few undergrads after nearly having a mental breakdown trying to find parking because I didn’t have time to walk or take the bus. Every head turns. Aside from the professor who had coordinated the program and the speaker himself — a writer whose nonfiction work feels like what I might write if I were cool and people wanted to listen to me — I’m the oldest person in the room by about twenty years.
“Can I help you?” The Professor asks.
Yikes.
I posted a poll in the group chat: Who is planning on going to the R Eric Thomas event at Loyola this Thursday?
I got one yes and a maybe. The intrepid friend who had tracked down the exact location told me she was excited to go and would meet me there.
Perfect.
Recall I’m not flaky. It’s not how I was raised. I could probably count on one hand the number of obligations I’ve committed to and then straight-up bailed on in my adult life. This is not a brag, by the way. Making this level of reliability part of my identity has sometimes come at the cost of my own best interests. But it’s who I am and sometimes it comes in very handy.
If I really want to do something, but I know I won’t risk a paralyzing all-eyes-on-me-in-the-doorway moment — or even an ambiguous parking situation — for myself, I commit to someone else.
“I’ll be there!” I texted my friend. “I may even ride my bike if I remain too frazzled to figure out parking.”
As soon as I hit send, I knew I’d be there on time, with my knitting and my notebook, ready to walk through that door together.
And I was. A third book club friend even joined us to make our pair a squad. The space turned out to be a rather large room, for which they needed to bring in extra chairs at the last minute. Apparently college students also think this guy is really cool. No groups of people turned to look at me and wonder whether I was lost. (Side note: why does anxiety always think we are the main character in a situation like this? No one was ever going to care about my presence in that room!)
Most important, Thomas’ talk was great. Yes I was a forty-year-old author with two published books attending a talk targeting undergraduate writers. No I am not too proud to say I took away some excellent tidbits about employing empathy to connect with both my fiction and nonfiction readers. I took a few excellent notes for my current book projects and may have unlocked something really significant for the novel I’ve been stuck on for months.
I came away feeling grateful for the friends who sat on either side of me and also for this city. I’m lucky to live in Baltimore, near several universities and indie bookstores, where I can drop in on an event like this on a Thursday night and come away a different writer than when I walked in.
In her later decades my paternal grandmother made “doing what I can, while I can,” a big point of emphasis. She knew she wouldn’t be able to travel alone forever, but while she could she took the train to Baltimore to visit us. She flew out to southern California to visit my cousin. When she no longer had it in her to rush between terminals for a connecting flight or wrestle her suitcase on the train, she hung it up with no regrets. She knew she’d done everything she could, while she could.
I’ve been thinking about that since getting out to that Loyola event — my first like it in a while. Who knows how long I’ll live in Baltimore. How long I’ll have to do what I can, while I can in this place. I’m spoiled by where I live now and I hate moving, so I could end up accidentally staying in my “starter house” forever. But sometimes I wonder if I’ll end up in Philly. Other times I can see myself growing old in northern Vermont. Is there a chance I end up back in my hometown in upper Bucks County, PA? Maybe. Who knows!
Whenever my next era arrives, I want to bid my current one farewell with no regrets. That requires converting more maybes into yeses than into nos. While I’d love to be able to do it on my own steam, I’ve also worked hard to develop objective self-awareness. On my best days, I know myself well and without judgement.
I know my strengths, and I know I need to lean into them to smooth over my weaknesses. One of those strengths is my intolerance for letting anyone down. For bailing and flaking out. One of my weaknesses is that I habitually fail to include myself in that “everyone.”
That’s why I have friends. Not only friends, but at least one or two friends who will be so stoked go to a writer’s talk at a local university on a Thursday night, they will help research key details omitted from flyers and social media posts about it. Because for them, I’ll be the person who shows up. Even though I have to find a parking spot. Even though I don’t know exactly what to expect. Even though there might be a 0.001 percent chance of people looking at me and wondering why I’m there. And I’ll love it. I’ll feel like okay, this is the life I’m meant to be leading here.
There’s always a justification for avoiding an off-schedule peopling. It almost always makes sense, from some angle, not to go to the thing. I’m thinking of this angle every time I say “maybe.” But I’m also thinking of all the other angles, the ones where my life gets bigger and richer instead of staying comfortable. If I’m being honest, I’m also thinking of the angles where I should’ve stayed home because the whole day turned into a comedy of errors but if I’d avoided the train wreck, I’d also have missed out on a hilarious story we’ll share forever. Or a chance to be the person who was there in a tough spot when I was needed. I’m thinking of all those angles, and I’m hoping the unexpected wins out.
I’m hoping I end up walking into the strange room and coming out with a story, even if it’s about how I should’ve gone to the gym instead.
Leave a Reply