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man-person-red-whitePhoto via Visual hunt

Someone recently asked me if I wanted to buy a circus. Okay. Not literally. But what they were asking me to do would have amounted to creating a circus out of my life.

I’m a “refusal-challenged” person. In other words, just like Ado Annie in Oklahoma, “I cain’t say no.” Whenever somebody asks me to take on a new project, or I see a void that needs to be filled, I’m like an easily distracted puppy. I’ve gotten myself wrapped up in a lot of trouble that way, because I tend to bite off more than I can chew.

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Photo credit: WSK_2005 via VisualHunt.com / CC BY-NC

But I’m trying to learn my limitations. When I hung up the phone with this person asking me to commit to something I didn’t really want to do, a common saying went through my mind: “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” And I realized that I didn’t want to make it into my circus. So I (gasp!) said no.

My plate is as full as I want it to be right now. I got a family to run and books to write. What more could I ask for?