Lessons I'm learning in 2014

At the end of this, the first month of the two thousand and fourteenth year of our lord, I feel like I'm being a taught a lot of lessons.  Things have been dawning on me lately and I'm going, "you know what? That makes a lot of sense."  I want to record these lessons here for myself, so I'm gonna start a little muti-part series here on the blog. Here's the first thing:

Live Life
As an introvert, my natural tendency is to stay home.  I love my house where I live alone with my dog and my couch and my blankets (among other things. Those are just my favorite things).  I love to read (alone). I love to watch tv (alone). I love to sing while washing the dishes (alone).  There's nothing wrong with any of these activities, there's nothing wrong with being alone, and I do think I need a healthy amount of both to re-energize for work and life in general.

But life has got to be more than that. At least mine does. It's got to be connections with people and stories to tell and experiences that make me laugh.

It seems like, especially as I get older, it's just easier to stay home and do my own thing. To stick to routine instead of sticking my neck out. Which is weird, because I figured out a long time ago that an interesting life is a much better way to go.

So this is one of the lessons I'm learning these days. Live life. Try new things. Meet up with people I haven't seen in awhile, even if it means I have to extend the initial invitation.  Invite people to study a book with you, even if that's kind of a scary thing to put out there. Have experiences that give me new stories to tell.

You know what doesn't matter? How many books I end up reading this year.  Lots of people seemed impressed with my 95 books last year, but my only reading goal for this year is to read less.  Not because I don't value it, but I want to value relationships more.

My first big realization with this lesson came last weekend. My friend Taylor had invited me to come to Atlanta to participate in a flash mob, and I was hesitant at first. It seemed like a long way to go for something silly.  Finally, after I thought about it for almost a whole week, I realized this was a chance to live an interesting life. Why would I pass that up? Let's face it, if I'd stayed home, I probably would've just bonded a little bit more with my couch.

This isn't something that comes easy, but it's something I'm willing to work on. Thoughts?



PS: BTDUBBS, you can thank my friend Cindy for this blog post. She did something for me and instead of letting me repay her, she suggested I offer payment in the form of a blog post a week.  I have missed my blog, so that was a payment plan I was willing to accept.