Last night my friend McCrim called me up and asked if I would do some sort of silly improvisational musical performance that she was trying to plan, and she needed the whole thing planned by today, with a title and three sentence description for the calendar and everything. Obviously I said yes, and we had a fun time on the phone planning whatever this thing is going to turn out to be.
After we got off the phone, I thought to myself, “That is exactly what I want to be doing.” I want to think up crazy musical ideas, and then call people and just make them happen. I have no shortage of crazy ideas, that’s for sure. So why don’t I just do them? What is holding me back?
Here’s the thing. Any time anybody sends me a Words with Friends request, I accept it. I don’t care if it is some random person that I met once at a party and never saw again, but somehow became Facebook friends with. I am good to go. And yet, I never would send a request to someone else. Because I know that some people hate getting random game requests, and I don’t want to bother anyone. So even though I am good to go, I assume that most other people are not.
Am I being silly? Or timid? Or something else? It feels like anytime I ask people to do something, whether it is singing something in church, or just hanging out some night, I get met with very full schedules and no ability to do anything spontaneous. If I want to hang out some weekend, the response I seem to get most often is, “Well, I’m busy for the next five weekends, but I think there is a Thursday in May that I might be free…”
Now certainly this is not true of everybody, and while it may seem like I am just whining and complaining about other people, really I am whining and complaining about myself, and my lack of courage to just ask people things. Writing about it is just my way of psyching myself up for all of the things I want to do in the near future. No longer will I assume that people are busy or unwilling to do something spontaneous and fun, and even if they are I will not let that deter me from asking the next person.
So if I, or someone else, comes up to you and asks for your help with something silly, I would encourage you to just do it. I’ve found that life is a lot more interesting when you open yourself up to last minute opportunities. And if you all try to play Words with Friends with me, I will accept, but with 147 games going, it may be a few days in between moves. I’m just saying.