Might be a bold title for my first blog post, but that’s kinda in line with how I like to do things…although that wouldn’t be most people’s first guess about me. In most situations I tend to stay quietly on the sidelines, observing life as it goes by, making choices that keep me safe. In reality, I’m the kind of person who wants to take risks, who wants to be noticed, who wants to do things that matter, things that aren’t necessarily easy to accomplish.

To do that, I’m going to have to take some risks, and I found myself in a situation earlier today that gave me wisdom on how to best do that.

While running on the North Bank trail today after work, I found myself being drawn to leave the path and continue on through a cemetary up above the trail. Considering that I was due back at the YMCA in 45 minutes for my favorite yoga class ever, I stopped for a second to make sure I was making a good decision. [Stop-and-think: the difference between impulsivity and spontaneity.] I decided that the somewhat sketchy person I passed at the head of the North Bank trail, who I could possibly encounter again if I didn’t switch paths, was reason enough to change it up.

In an effort to look out for my own safety, I was now more aware of the ever present ticking of the clock as I ran along the paved cemetary road. Pretty soon I realized I was not in Hollywood Cemetary, as I had thought, but another cemetary right next to it. The problem with cemetaries is the fact that they are surrounded by fences. These fences keep people out so they dont wreak havoc on the place at night, but they also trap me in when I’m trying to run the most direct route from point A to point B- which in this case happens to be though the giant burial ground rather than around it.

The point in which I realized my unintentional imprisonment was the moment I started looking for a way to get around the fence situation. There were a few trees growing along the fence, which I definitely tried to climb..but the prickly-ness of the barbed wire at the top was just too threatening once I got up on it, so I retreated in hopes of a better option. After running along two sides of the fence, that better option came in the form of a portion of fence which had been raised up enough to shimmy under, and which someone before me obviously created in order to accomplish the same goal as me. [No idea is ever original.] I shimmied under the fence with the newfound determination that I would in fact make it to yoga, though the dirt crawl left me feeling a little more “one with nature” than I had imagined I would.

The point is that scaling a fence in broad daylight is risky enough as it is, but when you add the threat of barbed wire, the distance to fall down from, and the chance of injuring my foot or leg beyond immediate usability, it really wasn’t a risk worth taking just to get to a yoga class.

Turns out there are rules to the risk-taking game, and rules aren’t always a bad thing like us risk-takers sometimes like to think.