Wonder Woman Syndrome

This is another blog post to all my girlfriends out there. It's now January 27th and you've probably already violated most of your New Year's resolutions, right? Well, I'd like you to write one more resolution this week. Come up with one thing that you'll STOP doing! Stop? Yes, stop.

I realized recently that I don't have a single female friend who's a slacker. I don't have a single friend who takes life one day at a time and doesn't worry about everyone and everything around her. Why is that? We're all suffering from the dreadful Wonder Woman Syndrome (WWS). WWS is a serious condition in which a female feels as if she's the only person on Earth who can save its inhabitants from hunger, illness, boredom, contamination, discord, and mediocrity. WWS sufferers often show signs of slight mental imbalance, extreme fatigue, an inability to concentrate on one subject longer than 10 seconds, carpal tunnel (from carrying a purse, briefcase, books, first aid kit, jackets, and small children at the same time), and inappropriate verbal responses when asked how she's doing (i.e., "Fine!").

Ladies, how many times have we said, "If I don't do it myself, it won't get done right" or "I'll spend more time teaching someone else than if I'd just do it myself?" [In fact, my cousin and I were just saying this. Hi Mel!] How many times have we said "yes" when we were thinking, "Are you smoking crack? There isn't a chance in hell that I'm going to have time to do that?" How many times have we fallen into bed and felt as if we've been Hans Solo for the day fighting off all of the bad guys in the universe?

Do we really believe that if we don't do it that it won't get done? And would it matter if it didn't get done? Would the world come to a grinding halt? Would it hurt anyone if you took a few things off your plate so that you could spend more quality time with your husband, kid(s), friends, or Heaven forbid on yourself? I don't think anyone would really notice. In fact, they might feel more useful if we let them take care of a few things.

This became obvious to me during my last day in the office before the surgery. A friend of mine had to drive me home because I was in no condition to drive myself. On the drive home, I was worried about all of the things in the universe that needed to be done that I couldn't do. She said (in a rather abrupt way I might add, Ms. Kathy!), "You should give the rest of us the benefit of the doubt." Huh? "Maybe you should have more faith in your friends and know that we're just as capable of taking care of you as you are of taking care of everyone else. Let other people take over for once in your life. We might do a good job of it." Well said. She was absolutely right. I was worried that everything would fall apart because I had to step away for a few months. In fact, the opposite happened. Things went right along as planned WITHOUT ME! You see, the truth is that we run ourselves so hard that we actually do harm to everyone around us because we give too many parts of ourselves away to insignificant things. Even if you're the only one who you don't spend time on, the people you love suffer because you're simply not as happy as you would be if you'd just slack off once in a while.

So, stop taking care of the world; maybe focus on the Northern Hemisphere for a while. Inhale; exhale. Take some time for yourself. The planet will continue to rotate just fine in its current orbital path.