I’ve been told I’m stubborn since the day I was born. How anyone could tell that from a newborn, I have no idea.
Then again, I’ve never been good at hiding what I’m thinking. Maybe I couldn’t talk yet, but my face was already saying, “You’re not the boss of me.”
That doesn’t mean I wasn’t listening. My ears worked just fine. I’m a great listener. Unless you’re telling me what I should do.
My ex-husband used to complain that I’d ask for his advice, listen to it, and then do whatever I wanted anyway.
“Why did you ask me?” he’d say.
“Because I wanted to know what you thought!” I’d tell him.
I respected his opinion. I just never said I was going to follow it.
Maybe it’s not stubbornness. Maybe I’m like Einstein and just know stuff.
Yeah…I’m laughing at that too.
On second thought, I’m more like Lucy Ricardo. I always have a plan. Whether anyone should let me carry it out is another question.
Sometimes my brilliant ideas work out beautifully. Other times, the vision I’m following is looking in another direction.
For example, years ago, someone dared me to shave my head. My nine-year-old daughter begged me not to. I did it anyway, leaving one little tuft in the front.
She didn’t speak to me for a week.
It gets better…I completely forgot I was scheduled to film a crafting show on HGTV in a month. And I looked like my dad without a goatee.
So I did what any rational girl would do and put a pink bow on my head so strangers would know I was a girl. Between you and me, now I just looked like my dad in drag.
Now, you’d think the haircut would have taught me to listen when people tell me an idea is crazy. But if I’d done that, the Dolly Mamas might never have happened.
At the time, I was making jewelry display stands out of wire. Then, two months before the next Buyers Market of American Craft, I decided to put the wire stands aside and make Dolly Mama shelf sitters instead.
Everyone—and I mean everyone—told me it couldn’t be done.
Telling me no is one thing. Telling me I can’t? Well, that’s a whole other suitcase to unpack.
They may have had a point. I’d only just dreamed up the shelf sitters, and I had no idea how to make them. But I could see them in my head, and I believed in them enough to figure it out.
And it worked. Those shelf sitters were the beginning of the Dolly Mamas you know today.
So yes, some of my decisions belong in a file marked WTF? But if I’d listened every time someone told me an idea wouldn’t work, the Dolly Mamas might still be living in my head—and it’s crowded enough in there already.
When I look at this Dolly Mama saying, “That’s a horrible idea. What time?” I recognize her immediately. Sometimes charging ahead pays off. Other times, I wonder why nobody stopped me—until I remember that they tried.
Either way, you learn something you couldn’t have learned from the passenger seat.
So go ahead. Be your very own test dummy. Listen to the advice, thank everyone for their concern, and then see what happens when you try it your way. You might crash and burn.
Or you might create something wonderful.
And if it all goes wrong, at least make sure you have a good story—and a pink bow.
❤️ joey
