is it ok: to be indecisive?

I started writing this column at a point where I should be eating dinner because it was too difficult to decide what to eat and how much of it to make. Plus, you know, effort. After sitting, debating whether or not to turn my heater off, and literally just staring at my computer screen for what was probably ten minutes…

Sorry, I just stopped halfway through that sentence to mindlessly click on both my Facebook and Gmail tabs without actually reading or taking anything in from either.

…I decided to at least start writing. I should probably be wearing my glasses since I have a headache, but they are over there and if I stand up then making dinner becomes, once more, an option.

The things already not working in dinner’s favour are that it is cold, and downstairs (so there is travel involved too). Then, once I (hypothetically) get downstairs, I have to decide whether to have crumpets, soup, an English Muffin, eggs or mishmash combination of all or some of these things. These are not dinner foods, so any decision I make is automatically wrong anyway.

If I don’t go downstairs I’m not going to starve because there are biscuits in my room. However, these fall even further adrift from the HMS Dinner Food than my other options, to the point that Yann Martel is considering writing a book about them. Unfortunately however, he would be out of luck, as they are already the protagonist of “Heart Disease – a short journey through the coronary arteries.”

I’ve eaten three.

So reading between the lines it might seem to one as though sometimes I struggle to make decisions. However you would be incorrect. I always struggle to make decisions, no matter how big or small.

I’ll attempt to paint a picture to explain. Figuratively though, because in reality I am unable to paint actual pictures as that would involve selecting a) subject matter, b) materials, and c) relevant talent.

Three weeks ago I bought a pot plant. Three weeks ago I decided to give it a name. Since then, every name I’ve considered has seemed wrong. He doesn’t look like a Steve, and he can’t be Jon Snow because he’s a cactus, and apparently has to be “wintered indoors” (though I apparently have decided he’s a male). * While it could work on an ironic level, I also don’t want to look at my pot plant and have trauma flash backs to that sex scene, because the hot springs were right there so they could have bathed first. **

Overall it doesn’t matter what I name my pot plant. In the grand scheme of things it isn’t going to overthrow dictatorships or bring dinosaurs back any more than choosing porridge over eggs for breakfast will. I know this, and yet, I will stand at the fridge looking like I have to decide within the next three seconds whether to cut the blue wire or the red one.

As a result of this decision-phobia, whenever such a situation rolls around, I tend to take the “easy” way out, or whatever the path of least resistance is. It helps to remember that most of the time there is no “wrong” decision (otherwise the solution would be obvious), however my freaking out and defaulting to whatever is convenient tends to lead to the less “wise” choice. Or, somewhat ironically, the seemingly less well-thought-outone.

Thus biscuits. Or YouTube when it is writing column vs. getting accounts ready for tax season.

The same scenario plays out as we go up the staircase of decision importance. Go out? Stay in? Well, I’m already here. But they’ll be offended if I don’t go. And I might not be asked again. Plus it might be fun. But I have to choose clothes. And get there. Plus it is warm in my room.

Usually my solution to this is to lock myself in to the decision I feel I should be making but will likely talk myself out of by second, third and fourth guessing ***, by telling someone I am a) definitely having the soup, b) sure I’ll see you there at 9pm or c) yes I did quit.

Try to remember it doesn’t matter. The fate of the world doesn’t rest on whether I use GPS or try and memorise the map, and my cactus will not be offended that I have yet to name him – plus he looks like he isn’t “wintering” all that well anyway so curses to you, advice I followed to the letter.

So, on that note, I’m off to eat soup! Or crumpets.

*at this point I took a break to listen to the Pokémon theme music.

**at this point I ordered a sewing pattern online

*** Fourth guessing is the worst. It involves an imagined scenario in your mind where you are the judge presiding over a court of people who are all you. Wigs are worn. Things get ugly

(Image credit)