Fool's Errand

After the longest Tuesday, I put up a post-it note above my desk that says: “In April, Say NO!”

In March, I said yes to too many things: yes to dog-walking, cat-sitting, babysitting. I said yes to drinks, yes to dinner, yes to the movies. Yes, I can move that meeting even if I would have preferred not to, yes I can take on that task even if I don’t know when I’ll have the time. On Tuesday–which all day I thought was the 30th but really was the 31st, the last day of March–all the yeses caught up to me. I both dog-walked and babysat, and spent all day on campus because I’d agreed to go up for a meeting I wasn’t really need for and an event I didn’t really need to attend. I was home for all of one hour. I was done. And so was the month, a whole day earlier than I thought. So in April I’m making myself say no.

Which sometimes feels like a fool’s errand. The errand is to protect my time from the fool, the fool is me.

If you know me, you know I have a hard time saying no. I have a tendency to over-extend myself. I’m a Sagittarius and I recently learned I’m an Enneagram type seven which makes so much sense and I can’t stop bringing it up: over-extending is what we do. In many ways, it’s what we do best. On Sunday, I walked my friend to the subway, sent her home to L.A. after a delightfully full visit, then I walked to yoga. Then I walked to my co-op’s monthly meeting and signed myself up for a committee position, then I called my mom while making strawberry jam, then I biked to a reading my professor was hosting, then I got a drinks with my classmates, then I took the subway back with a friend because I needed to hear her latest updates. A wonderful invigorating Sunday, in my book. But what I didn’t do was work on my thesis. Which is what I really need to be doing.

So I need the post-it up at my desk to remind myself to say no. It’s really a reminder to stay on task, to focus up. April is my final month of graduate school, and I have a thesis to turn in and a million other deadlines and events and goodbyes coming up. And to do all of that, there are a million big and small things I will have to say no to.

The first thing I said no to was writing this yesterday. The second thing I’m saying no to is writing much more than this. This is what you get. The third no I said was to a guided tour of Bryant Park to see the migrating American woodcock but I am reconsidering: would I be a fool to miss them, and their oddly long beaks?