Just because you can doesn't mean you should
I have a book inside me and it's staying there
I’ve always been a do-er, especially when it comes to feats of the brain. A classic overachiever, if something felt intellectually hard to do, I was all in and would grit my way through until I’d accomplished the “very important thing.”
4.0 GPA.
College thesis.
Teach for America.
Audition for Jeopardy.
A couple of master’s degrees.
Don’t even get me started on how much I love bar trivia and how deeply competitive it makes me. Do I recognize it’s silliness? Yes. Do I care? No. I will crush your team and win all the beer swag.
All of these things I’ve accomplished are fine. Good, even. I’m proud of them. I’ve gotten a lot out of doing them, and parts of them I have genuinely enjoyed. But an awful lot of the things I’ve taken on throughout my life have been added to my plate because I thought I “should.” Because adding another achievement to my heap would make me impressive, get me some praise, etc. etc. And sometimes, the pursuit of the thing was exhausting. (Not bar trivia, though. That one is always pure joy!)
All my life, I’ve been a voracious reader. And as I consume my books, I often think, “I could write one of those.”
I could. It’s within my skillset.
I spent a lot of years pondering book ideas. Beginning to do some research. Trying to figure out how to write a proposal. Thinking about the topics I’d want to put my blood, sweat, and tears into.
But as I’ve aged, and become more picky about how I spend my time, this is a place where I’ve decided that just because I can doesn’t mean I should.
I have a couple of friends who have written books, and turns out, it’s hard. Which is fine, because we can do hard things. But as much as I would love to see my name on the cover of a book, I’ve made peace with using the precious moments of my life for other things.
If you’re a recovering overachiever, I encourage you to think about the projects you take on, and how many of them might be “shoulds" that don’t really fill your cup.
Are you growing a giant garden because you genuinely enjoy digging in the dirt, or because you feel like you “should” be producing your own food and storing it for winter?
Are you listening to NPR every day, even though it stresses you out, because you think you “should” be an informed citizen?
Are you leading that committee because you “should” do it for the good of _________ (the school, the board, the children, etc.)?
(Are all of these examples from my own life? …Mind ‘ya business.)
What are some shoulds that you have let go of in your life? If you could wave a magic wand, what current shoulds would go away?
It hasn’t always been easy to convince myself that I’m allowed the time to rest and recreate rather than check off the shoulds, but I’m working on it. Here are some things I do with my life right now with the time I could be spending writing a book:
Go paddleboarding on the lake, bringing my library book so I can float in the sun and read
Hike
Do puzzles
Go out for coffee and bagels with my daughter
Learn about Indigenous Canadian History (my current “just-for-fun” Coursera class)
Life is a series of tradeoffs. Sometimes, choosing the “should” is a good move. But taking the pause to think, and decide what you’ll be trading it for, is the key to being able to wholeheartedly build a life you love, instead of the life you think you should be living.
Onward,
Rebecca