Right there he encapsulated everything about May that I love. When I realized that, I had a brief flash of crisis in realizing that if I was going to spend the entire month focusing on the negative and overthinking everything that’s built up to leave me feeling on the verge of burning out, I was going to miss the glorious springtime weather and happy anticipation that comes with the school year drawing to an end. It made a ton of difference for me to have regained that perspective, and made me wonder how great it would be to always have one person in your life who had the job of just stepping in to reframe things like that when it became necessary.
This reminded me of a story I saw in the newspaper a couple mornings ago, about what I didn’t realize was a growing trend of people hiring specialized life coaches. Apparently these people are available for nearly any area of self-improvement someone may want to pursue, although at a fairly significant cost. But who needs to pay someone $1,500 a week to help get them right when I just have to talk to a guy I know for five minutes and walk away with an improved state of mind? I felt like I just secretly took him on as a super-temporary Perspective Coach...and thinking that helped me remember a story idea I have stashed away in the vault.
Years, YEARS ago, I had a plan for National Novel Writing Month to try writing a book with…wait for it…adult characters. In a nutshell, it was going to be about a young woman frustrated with the direction of her post-college life who wanted to make a change but didn’t know where to start. Eventually she puts together a plan: Instead of investing her no money at all into hiring a life coach, she begins examining the advice she receives from the people in her life and starts seeing patterns. As an experiment, she chooses seven people she knows, ages ranging from a pre-teen to a senior citizen, and decides to start following every bit of advice they offer her to the letter. She doesn’t tell any of them she’s doing this to keep the advice they give pure, and assigns each different person an area of her life to guide her through. (Sidebar: Yeah, another female protagonist; I actually prefer writing female characters since I can’t relate to them in any real way, which forces to me to either develop them more completely or suffer through them becoming one-dimensional place holders.)
For the record, I’ve never worked with, or even considered working with, or doubt I will ever be moved to hire, a life coach. I’ve worked with several instructional coaches assigned to my school over the past fifteen years or so, which has been a mixed bag of experiences. But if there was someone out there I knew I could trust to guide me down the righteous path of self-improvement? What might be the harm (other than thousands of dollars thrown away)? So with all of this business spinning around in my head while I was driving home tonight, I began to wonder: If I were to collect a team of life coaches like that, either directly or anonymously, what areas would I want to work on? What are my gaps, or my deficiencies, or my failings, and are any of them salvageable? I came up with a short list of who I’d need on my team, and why:
*Driving Coach: I’m really a pretty good driver. Generally aware of my surroundings, very conscientious about observing posted speed limits and following all traffic laws. But once I get into the city and there are so many signs and cars and flashing lights and people and arrows pointing God alone knows where, any remnants of the attention deficit that defined my childhood kicks in and overstimulates me into inventing reasons that will quadruple whatever level of anxiety I might already be feeling.
*Cooking Coach: If I can take something frozen from a box and heat it up in the oven instead of the microwave, I basically feel like I'm the champion of the world. Anything beyond that and I’m pretty much out of my element.
*Social Networking Coach: I feel I’ve got Facebook figured out, and I’m getting closer on Twitter. Instagram is fairly easy for the little I use it, and I know enough about blogging to get YOU to follow the link that led to your reading this post, didn't I? That’s all fine and good for now, but when I look at other people in the writing community, I feel like my online presence is just slightly below negligible. I’m quietly hoping that if writing takes off and my internet footprint becomes more important, people will either see me as some mysterious and enigmatic figure that no one knows too much about, or they'll be thinking like, “OH, right. Him. Yeah, well, he is in his 40s, after all, and you know, technology and THAT age group. He probably spends more time thinking about his prostate than his hit count.”
*Dating Coach: Admittedly, this might be a lost cause.
*Male-Bonding Small Talk Coach: You know that time when a bunch of guys who don’t really know each other congregate at some social event, usually in a garage, because they want a safe place where they don’t have to talk to anyone about anything personal and can just drink beer and grunt? They tend to stick to the same four or five topics, and will share their opinions on these topics at safe, non-controversial levels (unless extra beer is involved). Those four or five topics? I honestly couldn’t care less about any of them, so I’ll wind up standing there spilt between hoping I’ll die soon or wishing there were some women in the room who might make the conversation even slightly more interesting.
*Travel Coach: Some people travel alone really well. I’m not one of them. If I’m not traveling with someone, or on my way to see someone, I fail to see legitimate reasons for letting my home sit unsupervised for days on end. There are a lot of places I’d like to visit and things I’d like to see and experience, but I just need to know how anyone can do this on their own.
*Single Life Domesticity Approximation Coach: I go to my sister’s house, and it’s a house. It’s planned out comfortably, attractively, and efficiently. It’s got decor, and plants, and dogs, and stuff, and it feels like a place where people live. I come home to my house and it feels like an overly-intentional set design for a play. My sister: “I’d like a gas fire pit for my patio, and therefore we shall buy one today.” Me: “I’m going to consider the pros and cons of buying new blinds for the kitchen, and then I’ll think about it for three months, and then I’ll take another month to decide I’m going to actually look at what’s available and start pricing some, and then….”
*Minnesota Coach: I’ve lived in Minnesota my entire life. It really seems like there’s a lot of it I haven’t seen or experienced.
*Procrastination Coach: True story: After finishing my taxes last month (yes, in April), I filled up a grocery bag with old papers and junk mail and the like that I wanted to sort and decide what I should save and shred and so on. I took this grocery bag and dumped it out on the living room floor behind my love seat, which put it in plain sight every time I walked into the living room but would never be directly in my walking path. I figured that pile of stuff would eventually remind me to sort it out and look it over. Three weeks later I found out my parents were dropping off their dogs for the weekend, so I picked it all back up and put it back in the bag and put the bag in my office, where it is currently sitting on floor, still untouched, four feet behind me as I write this.
*Fashion Coach: This is nothing short of tragic. I have a few small things I can do right (or, more accurately, don't miserably fail at), but overall, no. Just no. I might be beyond hope.
And this is just the short list of things that came from ten minutes of thinking. Any volunteers want to fix me? I might not say no. Or, I might just start paying really close attention to what you tell me I should do without you ever knowing….
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