Reset - Written by Wanda Rodriguez - Written on May 25, 2025 - Published on May 25, 2025

Reset

Written by Wanda Rodriguez

Written on May 25, 2025

Published on May 25, 2025

Do any of you out there golf?  My husband and I started together (eons ago!) as a way of bonding over a shared learning experience.  In reality, I spent very little time learning and actually playing golf.  It just wasn’t my thing.  When first learning, he had the distance right off the bat, but I had the straighter shots.  It’s too bad we never found a way to combine those two skills into one, consistent killer shot.  Alas, it was woods and sand traps for Dave and a gazillion shots for me.  The final blow for me with not loving golf (other than the boring factor) was the harsh reality that the highest score does not, in fact, win.  What!?!?!  Are you kidding me?!?!  Lame!!  I finally stumbled onto a sport where I can get the highest score and actually stand a snowball's chance of winning!  (Score!!) Here’s me, all ready to put my initials up for all to see (while they are filled with envy and heated determination to destroy me asap and replace my initials with theirs!), followed by the phrase, “High Score!!” (Think back to the glory days of an arcade full of flashing, whirling video games.  Remember crushing those aliens in Space Invaders and maybe, just maybe, having your efforts (and skill!!!) rewarded with your initials being displayed on the stats screen.  You reign supreme until the next alien hunter takes the controls and blows your score out of the water!)  

One redeeming quality about golf (As opposed to the ridiculous score/win issue) is the phrase and conditions with which one calls a Mulligan!!  What the heck?!?!  Really!?!?!  You can just shout Mulligan and start that hole and the subsequent point counter over!?!?  No penalty!  Just a free and clear do-over!  Sweet!!!  (I know, it’s not an official golfing rule but it is usually fair game to a few buddies out on the course.  They are free to “Mulligan” up a storm, to their little heart’s content!).  Mulligans were of no real use to me.  Even a generous do-over could not help my score any more than it could add distance and accuracy to my shots.  Sigh.  Still, the thought of calling a Mulligan whenever you wanted holds definite appeal. (Squirrel moment - Where does that name even come from?  Some guy from the past may have sucked eggs at golf (not unlike yours truly) and always demanded a do-over (wind, cough, sun in my eyes…), threatening to quit and take his ball and go home if they didn’t get a do-over! (that’s a shout out to “that kid” in the neighborhood who always had “the ball” and did just that when things didn’t go their way… you all know that kid!  Tell the truth, was it you?  haha!))

A funny footnote about golf is something my husband used to say.  I have been trying to find the perfect spot to work this tid-bit into my writing, to no avail.  So, I am just going to plug it right here and interrupt the flow (as if!) for a classic Dave Joke.  The king of dad jokes!  To set the stage, let me share that he loved dad jokes!  The cornier the better.  Seldom could he get through one without laughing before successfully reaching the end.  He really did crack himself (and all who had the good fortune to know him) up!  One of his favorites to tell, which he would proudly deliver with great authority and believability, had to do with the acronym GOLF.  It went like this, Dave - “Do you know what GOLF stands for?” Listener - “No. What?”  Dave (while chuckling to himself, all sense of seriousness and authority completely gone) - “Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden.” (Interject eye rolling and heavy sighs here from said listener and exaggerated laughter from Dave!)

I bring up golf for one reason only, the Mulligan.  (Yes, I really spent three paragraphs talking about golf for just that one word!  Deal with it, or I am going to take my ball and go home!  Bahaha!  Yes, I laughed out loud as I typed that and no - speaking to my editors here - I am not going to take this out.  It’s totally me.  Bahaha!  I am still cracking myself up right now!!  100%!!  Channeling Dave!)  What a great concept!  “I call a DO-OVER!!” And poof - your wish is granted! (Groundhog Day!)  How many times in life have you thought or said, I need a do-over or, changing up the working a smidge, if I had it to do all over again, I would do XXX. (Guilty!!)  Unfortunately, life does not work that way.  We all make choices in our lives, some good and others not so good.  From there we make more choices and more choices (and so on, and so on - Wanda flashback moment to Clairol Herbal Essence Shampoo IYKYK) and you can’t just shout, “do over” in the middle of it and back it up and do it over.  Sure, you can make changes and modify your choices, but those initial choices will always have happened and ultimately, they help shape us into who we are and who we are becoming.  

In life, we can’t just yell “Mulligan” and have everything magically go back to the start, we have to live with and work through our choices.  (Realistically, I guess you can yell mulligan if you want, but it isn’t gonna work and people will look at you kinda funny, like you just fell off the turnip truck or something!  Trust me.  I know from experience.  Haha! JK!)  Though you can’t zero out your choices and completely start over, you can push pause or hit your own reset button.  Take a beat to reshuffle your priorities, minimize distractions and move forward from there.  I started a reset of my own last night, and I have continued on with it today.  My reset button was with my phone, which I view as a valuable tool, a computer in my pocket, a wealth of limitless information (and equally limitless baloney!) at my fingertips!  It’s a powerful resource, like having a full set of Encyclopedia Britannica (Every house had a set!  Again, IYKYK) at your beck and call 24/7.  There should be a little asterisk (footnote or warning) by all the accolades that one might list for having a smartphone and it could read something like, “May cause distractions, loss of time, loss of sleep, a shift in your priorities and a glassy eyed gaze that often accompanies doom scrolling!”

My choice was to put my phone on airplane mode in order to silence beeps and notifications so that I could focus on whatever I needed to focus on.  I called it a reset.  I didn’t take away my phone completely, I check in here and there, but for the most part (about 95%) it has been quiet, with positive results.  I let my kids know I would be out of pocket for the most part so that they didn’t worry if they couldn’t reach me.  I have been more focused and productive.  Not to brag or anything, but we even made it to church on time (insert MC Hammer singing, “Can’t Touch This” and dancing with his parachute pants on!!) today!  What!?!?!  Facts!!  Okay, fine… 5 minutes late.  Still though, that’s an improvement!  Do you know why our arrival time improved?  I was more focused, and I did not spend time looking for external validation online through messages, reels, posts, etc.  Easily accessible technology really is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is the readily accessible information, and the curse is also the readily available information, which can provide quite the mind-numbing escape with the added bonus of its highly addictive component.

So, what is your reset button?  I chose to start with limiting access to the internet and the constant interruptions that the phone provides me.  Your button might be the same or it may be something completely different.  What distracts you from your commitments, from your family or friends, from getting outside and going for a walk, from getting places on time, etc.?  It can certainly be more than one thing, but I encourage you to pick one thing and push the reset button, whatever that might look like for you.  It just might help you focus on more important things and who knows, this short-term change might lead to long term improvements.  I may be getting the quote wrong, but I have heard something like this said, what controls your time controls you.  Free your mind up a bit, and push that reset button for a bit and see how things play out for you.

Cheers to a beautiful day!  Thank you for joining me in my reset adventures.  -Wanda