Push the Envelope

I feel I have been going along in life just a little too fat and sassy.  I have become complacent and smug in what I can do.  I know my limits and have happily resided in the place where they dwell.  The comfort I find in the recognized and well known has let me sleep like a bunny at night.

What I have refined and polished over the years has gotten me quite nicely to where I am today.  But, frankly, the consideration of all this soothing familiarity is getting to me.  I am bored to tears. Am I going to spend another 30 or 40 years baking the same things I bake now?  Will I persist on wearing the same fashionable and slimming black clothing that has served me well up to now?  Must I be consistent in my routes of travel?  Will I continue to go to restaurants and order the identical food items I have ordered every time I have gone to that particular restaurant (which actually offers 42 other items of mouth watering and tempting tidbits)?

It may be just another midlife crisis (I am now up to 6) that I am experiencing but I am prepared, geared up and primed to break out of my shell and boldly go where I have never gone before.  I used (in the stone age) to take risks on a daily basis.  Granted they were calculated risks with high returns, but nevertheless, I would, by no means, have hesitated if a new opportunity presented itself.

I want to shatter my comfort zone and be wild, go crazy and build my repertoire of new and never before tried encounters.  The problem is, I am not quite sure how to start.

Does one just wake up one day and decide to change their being?  Do you build up your untamed desires and plan to begin on Monday?  Is it a slow, methodical procedure?  Or, do you throw caution to the wind and jump in with both feet?  Is it a twelve-step process that just knowing that you are in this stalemate of life will begin your first stride into redemption?  If this is the case, I am on my way to my new well-being.

Out with the old and in with the new.  I vow from now on I will no longer default to my reassuring little place.  I will forge ahead and mix it up.  I will put mango sauce on my otherwise lackluster chicken; I will soufflé; I will get lost and find my way; I will buy a turquoise turtleneck and wear it with my black pants (I must wean myself slowly from my black addiction) and I will order a newfangled entrée and savor every morsel.

I must say this is quite the liberating day for me.  Pushing the envelope may have its disadvantages and I may falter.  I will pick myself up, brush myself off and have a warm fuzzy in knowing at least I gave it the ole’ college try.  When I succeed in making that left turn instead of my usual right, and finding a new path to follow, I will cheer myself on, “you go, girl!”  I just have to keep in mind not to get stuck in the next rut that is bound to present itself and if it does, just four-wheel out of it and not worry if I get a bit dirty in the process.

Cynthia A. McClelland, curious observer of the obvious with interpretations of the oddities of daily life.  Mother, wife and lover of the furry, resides in the north Lake Tahoe area.

Cynthia A. McClelland © 2003-