GIVING MY ‘YES’ & FINDING MY ‘NO’

9th Grade Me: Of course, I’ll do the artwork in that section of the yearbook.

25-Year-Old Me: Sure, I’ll be the public relations chair of the organization.

35-Year-Old Me: You need a president? Okay then.

If you read my entry last month, you might have surmised that in my life, for better or for worse, I’ve found it hard to say no. 

9th Grade Me (far right, of course)

 I wish 9th Grade Me had. I am not an artist, didn’t profess to be. I wasn’t totally without skill, but because my dad was an artist, I mean professionally, people overestimated my talent. So when I was asked to turn yearbook photos of those voted Most Likely To... into line drawings, I didn’t know how to say no. And I struggled. (Thankfully, with a few extra pen strokes, my dad saved some of my attempts. Yay, Dad!)

It was basically the same story with 25-Year-Old Me. “Hey, Jody. You have a degree in advertising. You’d be great as our PR chair!” With a huge dose of trepidation, I stepped up. I was very well aware that  performing PR tasks in a professional manner requires much more than my best skill set, writing ads for print, radio, and TV. And for those two years I struggled. 

Older me (25? 35? who knows)

Then came the call to be president of another organization. I was supremely flattered. And sure, I could do the job, but the realities of Doing The Job? My writing career would suffer. My free time would dwindle. But how could I say no?

That’s the day I found my voice. The words just came out. “Thank you so much for having faith in me, but I have so much on my plate right now that I wouldn’t be able to do as good a job as you’d expect from me.”

In that moment, I finally seized my power to say no. And in that same moment, I realized that from here on, giving my yes really means yes.

These days, Jody Feldman’s yeses come especially easy talking to individuals, groups, and schools about writing and being an author. Although she had to cut back on school and library visits the past months, she’s very open to saying yes again!