day35 - indecision
dear luci,
"I've acquired quite a taste
For a well-made mistake
I wanna make a mistake
Why can't I make a mistake?"--Fiona Apple, A Mistake
i've written today's entry twice already (third time's the charm) which is befitting of the title. when i was a child, my mum would go to the supermarket and give me a choice:
- Stay home (after all, i was old enough to)
- Come along an easy enough decision, yeah? pretty low stakes. to my dumb 11-year-old brain, this was life or death. i would think each option over, considering all the pros and cons. the time would come for my mother to leave, and i would worry my little mind frantic, working myself up to the point of tears. occasionally, it would get to the point where she would be backing out of the driveway and into the street, and i would fling the door open and run full-speed after the car, tears in my eyes, hoping she would stop and accept my overdramatic decision to join her. she generally did.
so why did it matter so much? it always came down to regret. which outcome would generate the most regret? i would probably be bored out of my fucking mind at the supermarket. i knew this well. but if i stayed home, i would miss out on anything that might come of that trip. if i went along, at least i knew for sure there was nothing to miss out on. inside my little bowl-cut adorned head were two warring impulses: Be A Part Of Things, and March To The Beat Of Your Own Drum. Generally, my fear of abandonment/intense FOMO caused me to default to the first option.
this indecision continues to plague me, to some degree, today. though i've worked through a lot of what used to drive my (at the time, seemingly) erratic behaviour, it still resurfaces without warning. if i am required to make a decision between two options and there is an invisible (but very loud in my head) time limit which will cause one or both of the options to expire, chances are you'll meet the kid i used to be. usually i don't care if one of the options is clearly and directly less appealing to me. but if they're both compelling, i will probably break down. it is a very annoying and very inconvenient habit, and tends to just leave me feeling far worse than i started out. it can tend to make me look flaky or indecisive (which i guess i am), but it's not out of a lack of caring.
it's so strange because i am very capable of acting on whim, in fact i think it's freeing to be able to consider my actions carefully whilst also knowing when it's cool to just say "i'll walk down this path, then", and do that.
there's really no strong conclusion here. i'm feeling this very thing tonight, and i think i let the options time out on me again. but a very smart person told me earlier today that sometimes it's overrated to consider that the end-all be-all of a creative piece.
so i will apply their wisdom by ending the entry here.
sweet dreams luci <3