The Year of Saying ‘Yes’

Michelle and I don’t generally do New Year’s resolutions. But we do try to make changes in our lives. Once in awhile it makes sense to make them at the start of the year, and this year was one of those times. We decided that 2023 would be the year of saying “yes”.

Could’ve, Would’ve, Should’ve

Michelle and I drove past a tank museum at least six times a year, every year, for over twenty years. Somehow we never managed to stop. It wasn’t conveniently close to home, nor close to anything else we really wanted to visit. The museum was partway through a rather long drive, and we were always eager to get to our destination, or to get home at the end of the trip. We never managed to say ‘yes’ to that museum.

As you might have guessed, the museum closed a few years ago. The estate of the owner sold the collection off piecemeal, to museums and private collectors around the country. Perhaps some day I will see a few of the tanks at some other museum, but I can’t go see the whole collection anymore. I waited too long, and now I can’t ever say ‘yes’ to it.

That isn’t the only missed opportunity in our lives, of course. But we happened to drive past the site of the old museum right after New Year’s Day this year. We started talking about it, and we decided that we need to stop waiting for “one of these days” and start making it “today”.

But time makes you bolder, even children get older. And I’m getting older too.

Stevie Nicks, Landslide

Saying ‘Yes’ to New Food!

Michelle here. I write a lot about food on the blog and I love to cook. Over the years, we have added a lot to our menu. We’ve tried new things like making tamales, and ventured into different cuisines.

A few days ago, I was at the grocery and saw boneless leg of lamb in the case of “special buys.” I’ve never cooked lamb, nor even eaten it that I am aware of, but I decided to go ahead and buy the lamb. Lamb is usually served with mint jelly or mint sauce, so I picked up some fresh mint too. I wasn’t sure what exactly I was going to do, but I was going to try.

I spent a bit of time browsing cookbooks and recipe websites and picked a recipe for roast lamb and one for mint sauce. For our Easter dinner, I cooked the lamb, the mint sauce, twice baked potatoes and steamed some broccoli.

It was excellent and I was really glad I decided to buy that lamb. I was also really glad that the recipes warned me that the lamb would look really red when it was cut and to trust the thermometer for testing when it was done!

Saying ‘Yes’ to Old Aspirations!

Back to Walt. I have wanted to run roleplaying games at a major convention for many years. I’m really good at creating adventures, and running them. But there’s a lot of administrative stuff that you have to do to run games at Origins or Gen Con. I always told myself I’d look into it next year. And next year I would think about it, but far too late in the year to actually start.

This year a game publisher reached out to me to see if I would be willing to run some adventures at Origins, using their rule system. They would do the administrative stuff, and I just had to make some adventures and run them.

And once I said ‘yes’ to Origins, they asked about Gen Con. I said ‘yes’ again, and now I will be able to say that I have run games at the biggest conventions in America!

Saying ‘yes, but…’

All this isn’t to say that we’re going to just agree to anything. Nor that we’ll try absolutely anything. We’re stepping a little bit beyond our comfort zones to an extent, but that isn’t really the main goal. In the end, we just want to make sure that we actually get around to doing the things we already know we want to try.

I doubt we’ll love everything. But that’s perfectly fine. As long as we don’t end up injured, imprisoned, or broke we won’t be sorry we checked out something new. As the saying goes, “you’ll never know until you try”.