In 1996, my senior year of high school, I was basically the improv champion of New Jersey. More specifically, I won first place in a big acting competition and the honor I received was the Governor’s Award for the Arts in Improvisation. My winning improv was about how it was my son’s wedding day and he came out to me as straight. “You’re gay! I raised you gay!” And then I won.
The basis of improv is, of course, the idea of “yes, and …” So whatever you are thrown by your improv partner, you must respond in the affirmative or the improv doesn’t work. The second someone creates a negative—“What do you mean we’re on Mars? We’re in our living room!”—the improv is done.
There are seriously too many metaphors I could use here. I’m sure you already understand the value and importance of showing up positively and being a “yes and” person. On the flip side, we all know “no way!” people or those who kill ideas before we even finish our sentences, and that kind of energy can be draining.
Disclaimer: Being a “yes and” person is not to be confused with saying “no” to projects we can’t or choose not to take on. Being a “yes and” person means, for these purposes, being open-minded to ideas, changes, and offramps.
Let’s talk about those offramps, shall we?
In the interest of being a “yes and” person—and forgive me for mixing metaphors—veering onto offramps that stray from your purportedly linear path can be extremely productive and liberating … albeit frightening.
As always, the advice I’m offering here is advice that is happening in my life in real-time. In recent years, in an effort to try to stay open-minded (i.e. be a “yes person”), I found myself swerving off-course and taking those offramps. These experiences took the shape of accepting jobs, freelance gigs, meetings with strangers, and sometimes buying tools that promised productivity (but didn’t always deliver because apparently, I have to use them for them to work).
Sometimes, these offramps frustrate me, even conceptually. Why am I getting so distracted by detours when I have places to be? Bear with me as I continue to pile on more metaphors (it’s the end of the year and I have to use them all up), but I have previously preferred life in the fast lane. When I’d get distracted by the offramp and therefore add a minute or a year to my route, I’d get grouchy.
Enter curiosity.
Curiosity is the power word I am going to bring with me into 2022. (Actually, should I just guh’ head and get it tattooed on me?)
When I look at problems, concerns, or even desires and well-worn habits with curiosity, I instantaneously shed the judgment. And I magically create a much-needed pause.
With that in mind, I’m starting to get curious about why I’m always in such a rush to get where I’m going.
I’m curious, to be honest, about where I am even headed.
I’m curious about the offramps that I’m choosing to take, and the ones I’m speeding past.
And that is how I am ending this complex year: without (too much) judgment, and with a whole heaping scoop of curiosity so that I can head into 2022 (22 is my good luck number, by the way) being both the yes-person and having the humility to recognize that sometimes we veer off-course because the course we are on … might not be the right one anymore.
If this resonates with you, just know that you are not on that course by yourself.
And though I do not believe at all in “everything happening for a reason,” I absolutely have faith (not the God variety, mind you) that even if we slow down, even if we take an offramp, hell—even if we break down on the goddamn highway without service to call AAA—we will find our way to where we ultimately want to be. As long as we are being intentional—actually, that’s my wife’s least favorite word, so let me change it to conscious—about our choices.
And for me, that starts with curiosity.
I can almost hear my best friend Erica reminding me that curiosity, in this case, is just another way of saying mindfulness or radical awareness … minus the word “radical” because it’s just something I put in there extraneously and hyperbolically, as it does not change the meaning of the word it is qualifying! For the record, I did not actually have this conversation with Erica except in my head just now. It’s just something I imagine her saying. And she’s smart, so let’s trust her … even though she literally said none of the above.
Wait, holy crap. Am I basically saying that I should trust myself here? Have I just become the person I rely on to offer advice? Am I transforming into someone who is radically evolving … make that, evolving?
Curiouser and curiouser.
Yes, I am a yes person: the 1996 improv champion of New Jersey, and don’t you forget that.
Yes, I am curious about why I have taken some detours despite giant, glaring warning signs, and why I’ve passed others by for no good reason other than being in a rush. A rush to where? To what?
I’m speaking in a lot of code here. Let me be more specific.
I am ending 2021 with the disappointing news that a project I’ve been trying to move forward for some time now is at a complete standstill, and there’s nothing I can really do anymore.
And in the immediate aftermath of learning that, I thought: I should become a book coach! I’m practically doing it already, through my flock one-on-ones for Our Hen House and my mentorship role with the Sentient Media Writer’s Collective. So why not make it official? After putting out a feeler to the Li.st that I’m in, I wound up speaking with a few book coaches and then an executive coach, the latter of whom promised to help me with the “hemming and hawing” I expressed in my original email. So we hopped on a call and within five minutes, I realized I have no interest in becoming a certified book coach. I wound up crying on that call with that perfect stranger and recognizing the ways in which I have been abandoning my own writing and creativity as I waited for word that my project was moving forward—only to find out it’s not going to, probably not ever.
Curiouser and curiouser and curiousest.
Since I’m on that fast highway in the fast lane in my mega-fast vehicle, my immediate instinct was to figure out something else to do with my time (even though, ah-hem, I have plenty to do with my precious time), which is why I considered helping others find their voices and tell their stories, instead of prioritizing my own voice and my own story.
Curiosity. It’s the word that keeps coming up for me as I end this year with a little bit of a gut-punch but a bigger sense that there’s more to come, and I don’t have to rush it. I told that executive coach that I wanted to publish a new book every two-three years, even though that’s “unrealistic.” Unrealistic. That’s the word I used. And she asked me why I wanted to do it if it’s unrealistic, and I said … I said …
I didn’t really say anything, because I have literally no idea. Other than that’s just how I roll; I hurry. I get shit done. I am a doer. I am a follow-through queen! That’s why.
I’m late. I’m late. For a very important date. No time to say hello, goodbye, I’m late I’m late I’m late I’m late.
For … what? Exactly?
Look, I’m not sure what happens next. I do know that in the past few days, I’ve recommitted to my own early morning writing and I’ve managed to start to put on “paper” that young adult novel I’ve batted around in my head for the past year. I am already daydreaming about what happens to the characters whose world I am building, and I consider that a promising sign.
But I will approach their story, just as I will approach my own story, with curiosity, a “yes and” attitude, and the understanding that I can slow down long enough to take a sip, have a chat, and reassess where it is I’m going.
xo,
jazz
P.S. This: