Out of the Box

March 14, Week 2, Day 14

This is it.  D-Day.  The two-week mark of my fourteen-day Dale Carnegie challenge, and apparently I’ve been reading the wrong danged book.  After I finished the last chapter earlier today, and even read the somewhat obsequious Afterword by Thomas Lowell, I returned the book to the eager hands of my father.  When I’d told him that I was reading it, his fervor for the Word According to Carnegie was rekindled, and he could hardly wait to revisit the faded glory of his younger entrepreneurial days.  He burrowed further into his Snuggie and cracked the cover with a contented sigh, only to unleash a string of expletives mere moments later.  Granted, my father has been known to unleash a string of expletives over such minor occurrences as a hard-to-find-in-the-pantry-even-though-it’s-staring-you-in-the-face bag of cashews or wax on his dental floss, but I hardly expected him to revert to form in the hallowed House of Dale.

As fate would have it, the revised edition of How To Win Friends and Influence People is a far cry from the short and sweet outline of Carnegie’s main principles that comprises the original, which avoids a lot of the repetition that I found so cumbersome in the revised edition.   I can’t help but wonder how the difference between the two volumes might have impacted my experience of reading it, not that I feel in any way tempted to test the theory.  Stuck a fork in me, Dale.  I’m done. 

However, I don’t want to neglect mentioning the content of the last four chapters of the book, lest I later fall victim to the “Oh, God, I never went to my senior prom”-type phantom pain some people claim plagues their adult years.  Once started, better finish, and I have to admit to some curiosity about the big ending.  Predictably, the final principles were just more variations on the theme of appreciation and encouragement (i.e. “Praise every improvement”, “Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to”, “Make the fault seem easy to correct”, and the refreshingly unabashed “Make people glad to do what you want.”)  Needless to say, I didn’t get the big ending I was hoping for from Mr. Carnegie, or from the last two weeks, but I may have gotten something better.

Part of the exhilaration of beginning this little project lay in the prospect of something to do, something to accomplish, as well as the expectation that all good plans lead to anticipated results.   I envisioned that I would either be cheerily broadcasting the unqualified success of my longed-for job interview, or brashly packing my bags and heading into the sunrise in search of the destiny that was so clearly having trouble finding me in my childhood home. 

Dale Carnegie has been quoted as saying that he saw his job as helping people to conquer their fears and develop courage.  Well, I’ve never been afraid of flinging myself into a ridiculous array of unfamiliar circumstances, just for the thrill of making it work, or rising to the challenge of a new task.  What I feared then and fear now is that I will be, go, do, and see nothing.  That I’ll spend my life living vicariously through books and gazing out windows, while my life passes me by like a vaguely familiar ghost.   But when I stop the violin music and tragic pondering, I realize that this would never happen.  It’s already not happened again and again.  

I’m doing everything I can think of to create this next phase of my life.  The only thing I’m not doing is the thing I fear, which is whatever happens when I stop worrying about the things I think I should be worrying about- the job, the apartment, creating a profile on Match.com, the incipient infertility!  Honestly, my job search-related activities take two hours a day, max, but I have managed to fill the remainder of the time with endless projects and to-do lists, lest anyone suspect that I might be happy right now, living with my parents, watching the seasons change.

So no more assignments, no more projects, and no more comparing my life to Amelia Earhart’s.  No more “fitness challenges”, liver cleanses, or self-help guru assignments.  What thirty-four year-old women in her right mind would fritter away the chance to do exactly what she pleases, when she pleases, at a time of life when most modern females are overextended and overwhelmed by the pace and practicalities of their lives?  I’ve still got my eye on the prize, mind you, but no more of this rabid bat in a cardboard box baloney.  I’m going to make the most of every day, and I’m NOT going to make a blog out of it.  But if I did, I’d call it “My Fabulous(ly Successful) Life as a Stay-At-Home Daughter”.