As I said in my previous post, I have my own place for the first time in my life. As I also said in my previous post, this is not the bright carefree venture that I imagined it would be. I can't blame Disney for this one. Disney movies may have misled me about romance, but they never said anything about what a joy it would be to live on my own as a single mom with a head full of things to sort out. Princesses live in castles (or occasionally a quaint country cottage), and Princess life doesn't involve a rent check due by 5 pm on the 5th of each month. I live in a townhouse in Clarksville - and "by 5 on the 5th" most definitely applies to me. I guess I'm not a princess.
There have been other clues that I am not royal. One of the most evident is that I am not assertive. Everyone knows that royal people are assertive - their first word is actually a finger snap, loosely translated as, "Bottle, now." I, on the other hand, only snap my fingers to indicate that I just remembered something I should have done earlier - like pay the rent. I'm pretty sure this is where the phrase, "Oh, snap!" originated - created by fingerless people who also forget things. But I digress.
My mother will tell you that one of things she likes best about me is that when there is something I want to know about, I just go learn about it. It's one of my super powers, this ability to become so familiar with any subject in so little time that I can be prepared to liven up a cocktail party hosted by a champion duck breeder with only a few hours' notice. Naturally, when I realized that assertiveness was something I lacked, I went online to figure out where I could get some. As it turns out, it's one of the few things you can't buy on eBay or Amazon. It's something you have to develop.
I really dislike it when I'm told that I need to develop something, though that has nothing to do with why I am not a photographer. You see, in order to develop a skill or a habit, you need to have a whole host of other skills and habits already developed, like will power, commitment, consistency, and a firm belief that the thing you are trying to master is worth mastering. I don't have those other skills and habits, so I've hit a bit of a wall in the self-improvement process. The phrase I tend to employ in situations like this is, "Drat! Foiled again!" The comfort food I tend to employ in situations like this is Ben and Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream.
So what does one do when one has to build a birdhouse, but one lacks all the necessary tools? Obviously, I need to acquire some tools. Ordinarily I would try to borrow the tools from someone else, or if I absolutely had to buy them I would try to get them at Goodwill or maybe Harbor Freight (if I didn't need them to last for more than a couple of small jobs). But I'm building a birdhouse here...wait...okay, yeah, I'm building a birdhouse, but it's for an emu, so it needs to be built pretty well. I need to go to Sears and buy Craftsman tools - because if they break later I can get new ones for free. Or maybe since I am working on self-improvement, I should go for the obvious home-improvement joke and buy my tools at Home Depot. Or Lowe's - I'm not getting paid by either of them (though I would like to state that I am open to sponsorship proposals, advertising contracts, and book deals). Oh, forget it - I've chosen instead to go with my Anton Chekov impression as I say, "Abandoning analogy now, Captain."
Before I can learn to be assertive, I need to decide if becoming assertive is something worth doing. Then I need to learn how to follow through on things I start. In other words, I need to develop consistency, and for that I'm going to need to develop some will power - the ability to choose the harder right over the easier wrong. And the thing that will motivate me to keep doing the right thing even when I really don't want to is going to be my firm commitment to this process. It's a good thing I don't have anything else going on in my life, because this is going to take a while. I'll take these on one by one starting tomorrow, but before I do...
*snap* Ice cream, now.
Regards,
Allison
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