Leap Year

I came down to earth on Thursday in the best way possible.

I was attending my boxing class and when Abby, our instructor, told us to start jumping up into the air.

This is part of the warmup and it builds up your legs and endurance while giving you a preview of the absolute hell that is to follow.

I was hopping up and down when I noticed out of the corner of my eye that one of my classmates, a very nice guy I’ve known for years, didn’t appear to be jumping all that high.

Gee, I thought, he’s not trying too hard, is he?

This is something I do much too often: judging or criticizing others when I should be minding my own business. And even though I keep my mouth shut, I don’t like making these snarky judgments of other people—especially people I like.

And then something strange happened: a voice that seemed to be coming from outside of my mind said, “why don’t you focus on your own jumping and forget about your buddy?”

It sounded like great advice, so that’s what I did, getting down lower and jumping up higher. I felt so much lighter after dropping that chip on my shoulder.

As part of my “Hey 19” New Year project, I’m trying to be happier and this includes shaking off these unhealthy attitudes.

Maybe my friend was having knee problems, or maybe he just wasn’t that good a jumper. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that is I caught myself in an old, unhealthy pattern, and broke out of it.

This last week has been full of these similar little bright spots that I’m trying to cultivate.

My TV started giving me grief one night last week, refusing to give me a picture no how matter what buttons I clicked on the remote.

I have a habit of freaking out when the machines in my life misbehave and I could feel my mind sliding into freak-out mode as the boob tube lived up to its name.

I Screen, You Screen

But then I pulled the plug—on both my television and my temper. Every time I’ve called my cable company in the past, they’ve told me to yank the plug out of the cable box, wait 30 seconds, and plug it back in.

Nine out of 10 times this routine works, so I decided to get a jump on the game and unplug the cable box before calling for help.

Well, it turned out I didn’t need help. Once the cable box warmed up, I picked up the remote and got a normal picture—without trashing my blood pressure or taking an ax to my widescreen.

My most fabulous writing class resumed this week and I was having a good time until my classmates starting reading their work.

Once again, the snarky little voice cranked up, only this time instead of judging others, I was aiming the nasty at myself.

These people are really talented, the Snarkmeister said. You’re not as good as they are--not by a longshot.

Then my logical side stepped in to remind me that the reason I took this class in the first place was to become a better writer. So how else can you improve if you don’t work with talented people?

And my classmates are the most supportive, least judgmental people on the face of the earth.

Now I have a hell of a lot more to do if toning down my negative attitudes, but I’m very pleased with these small victories.

And I had one more this morning when I reached into my pocket for a pen and found that it was broken in half.

It was made of cheap plastic, so it was hardly a huge financial loss, but upon closer inspection, I saw that it wasn’t broken at all. The two main pieces had become unscrewed and a smaller piece had fallen to the floor.

I retrieved the fallen item, screwed the thing together and the pen was as a good as new. I jumped high without ever leaving the ground.