{"id":5052,"date":"2011-01-06T18:15:12","date_gmt":"2011-01-06T23:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=3217"},"modified":"2025-07-30T13:14:21","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T18:14:21","slug":"i-cant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/i-cant\/","title":{"rendered":"I can&#8217;t"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For me, \u201cI can\u2019t\u201d is the most freeing phrase in the English language. Because I\u2019m backward like that.<\/p>\n<p>Not a week ago, I despaired of an emergent situation that had a deadline of 3 weeks, and wailed at Dude, \u201cI can\u2019t!\u201d Yet here it is, less than a week from when I said that, and \u2026 the crisis is almost resolved. (Dude doesn\u2019t really know this yet. Shhh.)<\/p>\n<p>I got to thinking about how I felt a week ago versus how I feel today, spurred by Mike Cane\u2019s post \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/mikecanex.wordpress.com\/2011\/01\/06\/the-universe-is-made-of-no\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Universe is Made of No<\/a>\u201d and a following comment by <a href=\"https:\/\/mikecanex.wordpress.com\/2011\/01\/06\/the-universe-is-made-of-no\/#comment-3573\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Bob Mayer<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"normal\"><p>The world is full of no outside of us. If we believe it. The key is if someone internalizes no. Then the NO becomes real. Most no\u2019s start from within. Then we hear it echoed around us. So YES starts from within.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That\u2019s nice. If you\u2019re normal.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/20110105_stucktongue.jpg\" alt=\"A still shot from A CHRISTMAS STORY of a young boy with his tongue stuck to a frozen metal pole, with another young boy looking on in amazement.\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-16097\" \/>I\u2019ve never been able to resist a dare (and I shall not bore you with my more embarrassing successes). To me, \u201cI can\u2019t\u201d is a dare, a catalyst, something my twisted mind takes and uses as fuel.<\/p>\n<p>I have to be feeling pretty desperate to use it. The last psychological stop for me is usually \u201cfailure is not an option.\u201d It\u2019s useful, but it\u2019s more to meet a long-term objective. The first time I ever felt desperate enough to use \u201cfailure is not an option\u201d I succeeded\u2014wildly and for many years. The second time \u2026 Well, I\u2019m still rolling on that wave of success, which continues to grow.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I can\u2019t\u201d is the last resort\u2014a barrel of gasoline thrown on a spark of will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For me, \u201cI can\u2019t\u201d is the most freeing phrase in the English language. Because I\u2019m backward like that. Not a week ago, I despaired of an emergent situation that had a deadline of 3 weeks, and wailed at Dude, \u201cI can\u2019t!\u201d Yet here it is, less than a week from when I said that, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[476],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5052"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5052"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16689,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5052\/revisions\/16689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}