Paralyzed by options
It’s almost funny how you can run into the same fucking problem in pretty much all areas of life, isn’t it? For me, it’s choice. Right now, I’m feeling this in a pretty small sense. I just started this blog a few day ago after postponing the idea for about a year. Over that year, I have accumulated dozens if not hundreds of ideas for posts in my head. My mind likes ideas. It likes fantasizing about what I could do with my blog, my day, my life. That gives it a little dopamine hit that it’s addicted little neurons crave so much.
Table Of Content
But then comes the execution and suddenly all those hundreds of ideas need to be put through the decisionmaking process. This is the part my brain does not like. When faced with a decision, it usually freezes up under the overabundance of options. Because what do I actually pick to write about today?
Choice training
Back in my younger years, choices were easier. I was a kid and I had little influence on a lot of things in my life. I had to go to school, so I went to school. That took care of a bit part of my day. When coming home, I had a few options. I could play videogames or watch TV or read or even write. All of these are fun. Household chores and other menial tasks were done by my parents and time felt plentiful still. Dinner wasn’t really a choice either. I just ate what was cooked, albeit with some complaints (my mother wasn’t a great cook). At night, I usually watched TV with my parents. We still had a paper TV guide and we usually picked a movie out of it earlier in the day. On a good day, there would maybe be two or three good options available. Pretty easy.
And then I grew up and suddenly my brain was bombarded with an overwhelming amount of choices. Do I go to work in the morning? Well, that one’s pretty mandatory if you want to feed and clothe yourself, so that’s not much of a choice. Still easy. But then I come home. Food isn’t ready so I have to pick and make my own. Healthy or unhealthy? Expensive or cheap? Fast takeout or prolonged cooking? My little beerbelly tells me I haven’t been making the right choice there everytime.
After food, it’s time to start filling the rest of my day. I work part time so that’s a lot of hours. And I’m totally free to pick whatever because, ya’know, I’m an adult… I always know what I should do, but that doesn’t mean I do it. I’m not that grown up and nobody ever really taught me how to make the right choice and how to deal with resisting the beckoning choices that are usually easy and unhealthy. I tend to pick these easy options. Napping, playing games, watching youtube, jerking off. Quick dopamine hit versus healthy long term choices. It’s the avoidance of discomfort combined with a dopamine addiction.
It’s kind of exhausting being presented with these choices all day and having to pick the right one over and over. Just getting into work with my avoidance is hard enough and already takes a big chunk out of my mental energy levels. Then I have to eat right, work out, do chores, eat right again and go to bed on time.
The streaming dilemma
Let’s use the movie thing as a little analogy for the general choice issue in today’s society. I just told you that back then, I had about three movies to pick between. And that was on a good day. Usually there was only one. Nowadays, when I boot up my TV at night, I have Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime, Disney+ all beckoning me to their service. Each of them has, instantly, thousand and thousands of movies available.
This paralyzes me. I boot up an app and I just stare at my watchlist of 500+ items and I just cannot pick. Put a gun to my head and even then I’d probably still need an hour. I pay a lot of money for all these services but I rarely use them because I go into a sort of short circuit whenever I boot them up. I just obsess over finding the one perfect show or movie for my mood and never really succeed, instead just browsing and browsing endlessly until I’ve sometimes spent as long as I would’ve spent watching a damn movie.
This is very frustrating and I tend to get really mad at myself when this happens. My wife isn’t like this. She just picks something, tries it out and moves on if it sucks. But I can’t. My obsessant need to do things perfectly needs to make the right choice immediately or I won’t make a choice at all. It has to be perfect in every single way.
Am I broken?
I think the amount of options broke my brain somewhat. I feel like this is a part of me that is getting worse with time instead of better. Even when I eventually do pick a movie, my head is constantly analyzing if it’s the right one and if I wouldn’t be happier watching something else. It makes it really hard to really enjoy a movie anymore and to be present in the moment.
The same pretty much happens right now. I’ve been thinking about writing a blog for hours and I couldn’t pick. Eventually I took the easy route here and wrote about the fact I cannot pick, but that’s only gonna work once. Next time I’ll have to make a choice and my brain will probably melt again. Because what if I pick the wrong topic? Even now, I’m constantly digressing in my head and doubting my decision to write about this particular thing.
It all comes down to this obsessive need for things to be perfect before I start something. I can only start writing if this crazy perfect wave of inspiration hits and I have the absolute perfect topic that I feel so passionate about that very minute. If I don’t, I tend to not write. Just like the movie. If it isn’t absolutely perfectly the vibe, length and age I’m looking for, I’d rather not watch anything at all.
This perfectionism is kind of ruining my life at points. It carries over into many areas of my life. I don’t work out if the conditions aren’t perfect. I don’t hike if the weather isn’t perfect. I don’t eat well if I have any excuse not to. Maybe it’s just the avoidance in me trying to find excuses to not do anything. But why would it even want to avoid watching a movie? That’s not torture, right?
Look, I did it
But hey, here we are. I made a decision and I went through with it! I wrote a blog about decisions. And tonight I’m gonna go watch a movie, in a cinema where I can’t change my damn mind. That actually works.
I do think it’s getting better actually, despite what I said before (I tend to jump from negative to positive in these ramblings often, it’s how my mind works as the negativity and the realism in me fight each other constantly). I’m starting to make more right choices. I work out more, I actually started this blog and I’m going to therapy and working hard on myself. Maybe that will carry over and maybe in a few years time, I can actually pick a movie and enjoy it. I just have to accept that it won’t be today and that all I can do is try to win these little battles over and over.
I also think it’s just a general skill of having some control over the mind that comes with lots of practice and time. I still let this anxiety rule over me way too often, making my decisions for me when I deep down know what I want and need. I need to work out, I need to eat healthy, I want to be happy and I want to watch my goddamn Sharknado 5: Global Swarming Director’s Cut. Now shut the fuck up and let me do that, brain! I’m not there yet, but I will be someday. Some glorious day.
[…] writing up and I am not sure what to pick for a subject today (you can read about my indecision in this post if you want). There’s a lot of things to write about but I somehow keep going back to these […]