I’m an extrovert, an Enneagram 7, a High I. Every personality test I ever took says I’m highly social, almost to a fault.

I live with constant FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

I feel certain that if I don’t attend an event or go to a party, something incredible will happen and I won’t be there to be a part of it.

And let’s not even talk about if I’m not invited. It’s devastating. I turn into a junior high girl, certain I’m no longer one of the cool kids.

I’m still not over the Christus St. Vincent’s 100th Anniversary Party on the Plaza when the Mavericks played a free live concert three or four years ago. We had gone to the place we owned at Heron Lake instead. I saw all my friends via Facebook, dancing or sitting around the obelisk on a warm summer evening, listening to one of my favorite groups. “You oughta be here, Bunny,” Judy Camp posted. And yes, I should have. Or at least that was my first impression.

Except. . .

Instead I relaxed with my sweetie, sat on the porch overlooking this view, ate great food, wrote four pages of my book, drank expensive wine, went for a long hike, and slept like a baby. So I’m not sure I missed out. I’ve seen the Mavericks half a dozen times. I know all the songs. Was it really such a big deal?

Heron Lake View from our cabin porch

And then there’s the day I finally got the guts to move to Santa Fe. It’s a day when I initially felt I was totally missing out.

But that one day lead to this magical life I get to live now. Want to hear about it? This was once a chapter in my book. It didn’t make the final cut, so now it’s an outtake.

It shows that sometimes missing out is its own blessing.

May 2012

One beautiful Sunday in early May, I wake up knowing this is a day that everyone is going to get on the lake in their new boats. There are two new boats in my group of friends, and we all live for the first day on Ute Lake. It won’t be warm enough for swimming, but we’ll take out coolers of beer and blankets for getting up on the shore. We’ll spend the afternoon sitting either on those blankets or in the bow of the boat, soaking up the sunshine, talking about the weekends on the water to come. 

I’m the original lake girl. I know this routine from my childhood. I also know it because last summer, Last Boyfriend and I were the ones with the new boat. We’d driven to Colorado and pulled a party barge home and worked on it for weeks before the weather broke. We were on the water at the first opportunity. And we invited a crowd to join us on the new boat.

So today, I wake up excited about a day on the water. I try on my black bathing suit, happy that being sad and pathetic has at least resulted in a ten pound weight loss. Now that I’m no longer in a drinking competition with Last Boyfriend every night, my stomach is flat and I’m looking better than I have in years. I search the bathroom cabinets for my sunscreen, get out the Zip-Loc bags for my phone and driver’s license. And then I sit down to read a book and wait.

Except that no one calls. I live close enough to the water that I can hear the boats going up and down the water. I sit on my porch swing on the back deck and watch a familiar expensive speedboat tear up the Canadian River leg of Ute Lake.

At one point, long after everyone would have gotten on the water, I drive down to the marina parking lot. There are four vehicles belonging to my friends, sitting there with their empty trailers. I go home and get on Facebook and look at the photos of all of them in their bathing suits, holding up cold beer in koozies, smiling at the camera and saying how the water is “just like GLASS!”

My feelings are hurt. But more than that, I am sick to death of myself. I cannot spend another year in Logan, being pathetic, waiting for my life to get itself back on track. I have to do that myself. I have to make that happen.

If I were in Santa Fe this weekend, I could walk to Ohori’s for coffee and then to Tia Sophia’s for green chile huevos rancheros for breakfast. I could sit on the plaza and people watch. I could go the Cowgirl gospel brunch and dance to Joe West and the Santa Fe Revue on the patio. I could drive up to the ski area for a hike.

That afternoon I get online and look at Craigslist Santa Fe. I know that it is absolutely time to stop being the single pathetic girl. “Enough!” I tell myself. I’ve never been the pathetic girl and I’ve indulged my misery for long enough. 

The next day I put my house on the market. My intentions aren’t totally clear to me or to anyone else. When people say, “So you have a job there?”  I’ll respond with “Well, sort of – I have some clients who would like me to be closer. . .” and trail off and look very assured. 

I’m not assured. I have no idea whether my house will sell or whether I can afford to move to Santa Fe or what exactly I will do when I got here.

I just know it is time to move my life out of neutral and into something slightly more magical, at least for me. I don’t know if I can use those phrases in Quay County – everyone is far too practical to talk about pursuing magic here. When Garrison Keillor says you’re not allowed to dream big in your hometown, he may know what he’s talking about.

But I can’t stay here. It’s time to go.

Without knowing why, I’m headed to Santa Fe.

This is a true story. Being left out of the first day on the lake in May 2012 lead to me finally taking charge of my life and moving to Santa Fe. Which lead to where I am today.

Which lead to surviving cancer, writing a book, taking over the Board of the Cancer Foundation for New Mexico, finding the great love of my life, and a thousand other fortuitous turns in my life.

My feelings were hurt that day. At fifty-one, I felt like a junior high girl who didn’t get asked to the dance. I sat on the back porch and cried for a half hour. and then I got up and decided to move on. None of my friends ever meant to leave me out on that particular day. They’re all kind and generous folks.

It just happened.

I’ve learned, finally, after years of agony, to embrace the joy of being left out. I know that for every time I’m left off a list or fail to make an event, there’s something equally or perhaps better waiting for me.

Who knows where I might have ended up if I’d gone out on the lake that May Sunday instead of sitting in my self pity? And then getting over it.

At some point, I had to learn that I wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea every single moment. And neither are you. And it’s perfectly fine, because what you need in your life will show up when you least expect it.

Learn to love missing out. Let it become a gift. Because frequently it is.

Thanks for checking in.