My Year of No

I never expected I’d get so much out of a “no”

I usually open each year revealing the word I have chosen as a guide. And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t do that in 2023. I suppose that’s kinda on brand for a year in which my chosen word was NO. Sorry, I wasn’t going to be bothered with traditions unless they made me happy. Sometimes, a tradition just feels like an unnecessary obligation.

Do I need to announce my word of the year every year? NO.

God, doesn’t that feel good? In all honesty, I started using that word pretty early on. As in: pulling it out and swinging it around by Thanksgiving 2022. Why not get some practice?

Most of the words I’ve chosen these past few years have been raging disasters. DARE in 2020? EASE in 2021? DEVOUR in 2022? I really had no idea what was coming for me and wow, did the universe have a laugh with those words.

But NO? NO has been a raging success. NO has been my guiding light. NO has been my happy space.

I’m not even sure I can give it up and move on with a new word for 2024. NO and I have been through too much…

I admit, I didn’t really get very far with it in the first half of the year. I started out with little nos — mostly the kind that made it easy for me to avoid socializing or other things this anxious introvert doesn’t want to deal with.

Then in April, our family was informed of the date of my 4-year-old nephew’s open heart surgery and at that point, I had a hard time remembering NO. Most of the next two months were nothing but yeses. I wanted to be there. To help. To do whatever I could for this darling boy.

I did have a few instances in which stressful family dynamics cropped up and I chose to say NO to it. To either leave the room or choose not to engage. (And honestly, that’s a big success for me.)

But other than that, I was all about the yeses until I finally arrived home in June, my nephew safe and healing at his home, and was able to reintegrate into my own life. Suddenly, NO felt like a necessity.

Everyone needed something from me. Between family and work, it seemed like the demands on my time were endless.

I said NO. A lot.

It felt amazing. Scary, but amazing.

By the time the solstice rolled around, I was hitting my stride.

As much as I was championing my own nos, I was getting a lot of nos, too. I wanted to start having some adventures. I wanted to do some traveling. I wanted to get back into hiking. I was itching to get out there with my friends and family and live it up. There’s nothing like watching a 4-year-old go through potentially life-threatening surgery to wake you up to the fact that life is short.

But no one ever had time. My family was busy with their kids. My local friends were either in the depths of new relationships or were trying to find time to spend with their husbands. Everything coming my way was a NO.

My usual response to that would be to change my plans. Surrender to the circumstances. Realize I’d have to wait until their boyfriends or husbands were out of town so we could spend some time together.

Guess what I said to that? NO.

NO, I’m not going to give up what I want to do just because the people I want to do it with are busy. NO, I’m not going to change my plans because no one can participate in them. NO, I’m not going to stop my life just because no one is available to join me.

So I laced up my hiking boots and started hiking by myself.

Sometimes nos — my own and others’ — become a YES.

When my birthday came around, the family started trying to plan something that would work for my brother’s kids’ schedules. If we had a little family party, as we usually do since all my friends are out of town on Independence Day weekend, we had to plan it around the schedule of everyone who has a family.

For the first time in my life, I said NO. I said it’s my party, I get to pick a date and time that works for me and if that doesn’t work for others, then they’ll just have to miss it. I said I’ve been adjusting my schedule in order to fit into everyone else’s for the last two decades and if there was ever a time for me to insist that my own needs get to be prioritized every now and then, surely that time is my birthday.

They said NO. (Like I mentioned, there were a lot of nos this year…)

But I kept saying NO. I stood my ground. I chose to spend my birthday by myself to validate that I deserve to be centered one day of the year. I deserve for people to be potentially inconvenienced once every 365 days just as I do for them for every other birthday and holiday. It is not too much to ask.

I had a beautiful day hiking in the mountains, followed by a doughnut in a cute little town on my way home. Yes, I was a bit lonely sometimes, but NO, I don’t have any regrets.

Opportunities came my way. I looked at how much payoff I would get for the amount of time and effort I was about to put in and realized it often wasn’t worth it. So I said NO. A lot.

In fact, I got so ballsy about this that when I was approached by a big company to do an ad for them, I was ready to play hardball. I discovered someone with my following can ask for $500 as a baseline compensation for promos (and that’s on the low end). When they came back with $100, I was totally willing to negotiate, so I proposed $250. They stood firm on $100.

I don’t remember the last time I turned down $100, but this time, it came easily. NO. No way. Absolutely not. I worked hard to build my audience and I’m not going to be low-balled.

A week later, someone else approached me with a bigger offer…and I knew my previous NO paved the way there.

Family gatherings came and went. If they weren’t convenient for me, I declined the invitation. If friends wanted to get together, but do so over activities that didn’t interest me, I said NO. If someone asked me to do a favor that I didn’t have the energy to do, I said NO.

I practiced saying NO to people who proposed business deals to me that didn’t seem appealing. I practiced saying NO to people who asked me to promote their work or lend my voice (and therefore, my following) to their latest business endeavor. I practiced saying NO to salespeople and sometimes (sometimes) to medical professionals. (I’m still working on that last one…)

I even started saying NO to my niblings. Kindly. Lovingly. But without explanation or apology. Just: NO.

After Covid forced my father to prepare for a move into a full-time nursing facility, plans were made without me, without inquiries about my availability for helping with the move, and I was simply told when to show up for the big day — a day that was already thoroughly booked with my own obligations that I’d scheduled weeks before.

I said NO. I actually said NO. I’ve moved my father from place to place for the past fourteen years. I figured it was fair for me to opt out this once.

And when the time came to make a decision about whether or not to sneak off to the coast before the winter snows hit, I asked myself a series of questions: Would I ever look back on this moment and feel proud that I had given up a trip to the coast so I could make sure I met all my work deadlines? Did I want to regret not having challenged myself to take this solo trip? Was I going to let the fear of doing this alone stop me?

NO.

So I got in my car and drove until the ocean came into view.

This is the first year in a long time in which I felt like my chosen word made a major impact. Some years, I felt I tried and didn’t quite hit the mark. Other years, circumstances intervened.

But NO is my champion.

A year of NO changed me. A year of NO empowered me. A year of NO helped me find yeses I didn’t even know I had.

I’m honestly a little reluctant to let it go.

Ultimately, I don’t think I will. One thing I know for sure is that people pleasers need this word more than anything. It is the only remedy for our condition. We will never find our own path without the word NO.

So expect a lot of NOs from me in 2024, too. My days of “Yes,” “Of course,” and “No problem” are long over.

© Y.L. Wolfe 2023

Y.L. Wolfe is a gender-curious, solosexual, perimenopausal, childless crone-in-training, exploring these experiences through writing, photography, and art. You can find more of her work at yaelwolfe.com. If you love her writing, leave her a tip over at Ko-fi.

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