Book Club

I've always had this fantasy about being in a book club so you can imagine my excitement when my sweet choir friend, Charlene invited me (well, she really invited everyone but I like to think that she hand picked me) to join her "totally awesome book club"!! Within minutes of joining the club I had the book downloaded to my iPad and a paperback on the way and I was ready to go. My very first book club! Eek!

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Well, fast forward 6 weeks and here we are...it's the morning of the book club meeting and I'm only about halfway through the book. How did this happen? What went wrong? I've made a personal plan for myself and it's taking over my life. Let me explain. My natural tendency is to stay home whenever I can. Honestly, If I had no responsibilities outside of my home, I would probably never leave. In Charleston, this type of thing would have been perfectly fine. Our friends didn't mind coming over to see us and with all that traffic, no one ever judges you if you say it's too much energy to leave the house but I knew this wouldn't work in Sumter. Matthew doesn't know anyone here and without friends and social options, he could never really be happy living here. So, I made a plan for myself to help us fit in. There are several official names for this type of thing but I called mine the "say yes to everything" plan. The basic idea is that unless I already have something planned, I say yes when I'm asked to do something. No exceptions. I started doing this to make sure that HeyMatthew was happy but I'm actually having a good time with it. Matthew has started shooting clay targets (I'd never seen him even hold a gun until we moved here), flown electric RC planes, photographed a ton of events and made friends with some of my family and church friends. I've run a 5k, taken a painting class, made lots of friends, joined a book club, learned how to meditate, eaten out 1,000 times and that's all happened within the last 2 months. Staying busy has been fun. I don't think I'll keep the plan up much longer. With the holidays approaching (and a calendar that is already full through the end of the year) I think I'll probably burn out pretty quickly but I'm so glad that I gave it a try. Having a social life has been fun but maybe my goal for 2012 will be to keep it up but save enough time to read. Wish me luck at the book club. Let's hope I can find something of worth to say after only reading about 40 pages.