The Summer of Yes
It took a disturbingly long time and Susan Cain’s fabulous book Quiet for me to realize that I’m a total introvert. Which explains why on any group trip, I’m always the one who needs her own room. Who needs a lot of alone time in any setting, really.
Self-awareness made life a lot easier for a while, but then the pandemic hit, and I became even more introverted (if that’s possible). Working from home didn’t help matters, and by this May, I’d fallen into some bad habits. To break out, I decided to take drastic action and adopt the “just say yes” strategy popularized by Shonda Rhimes, the ultra-successful and talented television writer/producer, in her 2015 memoir, Year of Yes: How to Dance it Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person.
To be honest—and with apologies to Ms. Rhimes—my decision was so sudden, I didn’t actually have time to read the book. Instead, I watched the 18-minute TED Talk that she did about it. (You can find the YouTube video here.) Her general strategy was to say yes to things that scared her (like public speaking) or that she was otherwise not naturally inclined to do (like delaying her departure for work if one of her kids asked to play).
In my situation, there was no urgent need to face things that truly scare me (zip lining, math, quite a few things actually). And a whole year of saying yes was way more of a commitment than I was prepared to make. But listening to Rhimes forced me to acknowledge that, like her, I’m not very good at “playing.” Something needed to be done.
That something became my Summer of Yes.
So, since May 15th, I have:
Gone to London, then Edinburgh to see Taylor Swift,
Gone to Cape Cod and the Jersey Shore and Atlantic Beach,
Gone to the north shore of Long Island and Bucks County, Pennsylvania,
Met with friends for dinner and lunch and coffee,
Met with friends I see all the time and friends I haven’t seen in years,
Celebrated anniversaries and birthdays and first communions and graduations and law school acceptances,
Frequented the Borough Hall Farmer’s Market,
Attended several book events in Brooklyn,
Attended Bruce Springsteen’s show in Philly, and
Spent lots of time with my sons in Hoboken.
And that’s just the exciting stuff I managed to squeeze in. There were several opportunities I sadly had to miss, in part because it was The Summer of Yes, not The Summer of Only Fun. In the last few months, I also caught Covid for the first time, went to the dentist, had my car serviced (twice), got the gutters cleaned, dealt with the laundry, and paid the bills, among many other things. You know, all the mundane tasks of life.
I also got a lot of “real” work done. There’s this blog and a memoir class I took through The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College and my weekly lunchtime writing sessions with Brown Bag Lit and research for my next book—the list goes on.
Still, as I look back at the last few months, I can’t help but feel that I didn’t work quite enough. Like Shonda Rhimes, I get a “hum” in my brain when I’m working hard, and it’s going well. At this point, I want more of that hum.
Perhaps, as they say in the current wellness lingo, I’m a “productivity addict,” someone who has a compulsive need to be productive all the time. Or perhaps all this socializing and running around just has this introvert pretty tired. In either case, while the experiment has been fun, the change of seasons has thankfully arrived.
To Shonda Rhimes—many thanks for the inspiration from a long-time fan. But I’m ready to say goodbye to The Summer of Yes. And hello to The Fall of No.