{"id":1751,"date":"2010-11-22T11:29:44","date_gmt":"2010-11-22T18:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=1751"},"modified":"2025-11-02T21:42:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T04:42:18","slug":"cab-anyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=1751","title":{"rendered":"Cab anyone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent work trip to San Francisco was both fun and a little enlightening about myself.\u00a0 It was fun because I’ve made good friends with some fellow vendors that I only end up actually seeing at shows.\u00a0 Two of them are even in my area, but we never manage to get together!\u00a0 (I blame their schedule…. they blame my men!)<\/strong><\/p>\n

I, per usual, found a cheaper hotel a few blocks away from the event hotel because I enjoy a nice walk there and back.\u00a0 But I’d forgotten that San Fran is mostly hills!\u00a0 And the hotel was the International Mark Hopkins.. which is juuuuust about on the highest peak!!\u00a0 I swear we looked down one street and Barb said, “OMG, I’ve SKIED smaller hills!”<\/strong><\/p>\n

So because I had a bag, I took a cab to my hotel room after I’d set up my booth that first night.\u00a0 Realizing my hotel was a short 8 blocks away I decided to walk the next morning.\u00a0 O… my… *gasping*… god!\u00a0 The walk was invigorating.\u00a0 But I was in heels!\u00a0 The walk back was worse!\u00a0 Downhill in heels… ouch!<\/strong><\/p>\n

I noticed everyone around me was hailing cabs.\u00a0 To a Los Angelean the concept of hailing a cab is as foreign as smoking in a restaurant now is.\u00a0 When I first saw a guy standing on a corner with his arm in the air I wondered what the hell he was doing?\u00a0 Then the light bulb hit when I saw more people doing it!\u00a0 I acted like a tourist seeing the “site of people hailing cabs!”
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In L.A. if you need a cab you call one, unless you’re near a cab stand.\u00a0 And other than\u00a0 big hotels and airports, no one knows where cab stands might exist in L.A.!\u00a0 So I told the hotel, one morning when it was raining, to call me a cab.\u00a0 They did and it took 20 minutes.\u00a0 20 minutes of standing there waiting and watching cab after cab after cab pass me by!\u00a0 The whole time my inner voices were having this conversation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Just hail one.\u00a0 How do I do that?\u00a0\u00a0 Just wave at one you see empty.\u00a0 Which ones are empty?\u00a0 They’re going too fast to tell in time?\u00a0\u00a0 Oh God, just hail one!!\u00a0 We’re wasting time!” <\/strong><\/p>\n

But the real voice that was more a constant low murmur over the other voice said, “I don’t know how to do it right.\u00a0 I’ll embarrass myself.\u00a0 People will laugh at me.” <\/strong><\/p>\n

So I trudged about up and down those hills in heels all the other days and didn’t hail a cab until the last day.\u00a0 When I checked out and needed to get to the event with my rollaway bag.\u00a0 As if the hills weren’t enough of a challenge the weather had begun to sprinkle.\u00a0 I told the hotel to call me a cab for 10 am and went in to have breakfast.\u00a0 Sadly thanks to a terrible waitress I missed my cab at 10 and they had to call another. While waiting I was joined by an elderly couple and engaged them in a bit of conversation. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Then a cab pulled up and that couple stole it from me!\u00a0 He just said, “come on, Maryann” and they popped over to it and hopped in.\u00a0 I just stood there flabbergasted.\u00a0 Rationally I knew they probably had called a cab also and assumed this was theirs.\u00a0 But they didn’t even ask or think I might be waiting for a cab also!<\/strong><\/p>\n

And it flat out pissed me off.\u00a0 I was late, they’d stole my cab and now I’d have to wait again!\u00a0 But who I was really pissed off at was me.\u00a0 So the real Heather inside kicked aside that inner whiner babbling about embarrassment; said, “That’s It!” and\u00a0 threw my arm in the air.\u00a0 Within 2 minutes a cab pulled to the curb.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The entire ride I contemplated the whole experience.\u00a0 It surprised me I still had these childhood fears hampering my life.\u00a0 Limiting my experiences and abilities.\u00a0 New Heather doesn’t have any issues with being bold?\u00a0 Why would hailing a cab terrify me?\u00a0 Or more importantly… why would I ALLOW such a childish\u00a0 small fear stop me from doing the logical or the new or the easy. <\/strong><\/p>\n

The fear came from being publicly bad at something.\u00a0 Which has always been my childhood terror.\u00a0 The revelation was… that it will never leave me just because I try new things now.\u00a0 And I must be diligently aware of it enough to make sure it doesn’t stop me from doing things in the future.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There’s a song… lol… of course!<\/strong><\/p>\n

My Own Worst Enemy by Lit<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Because sometimes we truly are our own worst enemies when we ignore learning about ourselves enough to conquer our fears.\u00a0 Or at limit their effects!
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A recent work trip to San Francisco was both fun and a little enlightening about myself.\u00a0 It was fun because I’ve made good friends with some fellow vendors that I only end up actually seeing at shows.\u00a0 Two of them … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1751"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3246,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1751\/revisions\/3246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}