The Undecided

I suspect that I am worse at making decisions than other people.  Although in truth I’m probably about average, it feels like I end up regretting more and more…. that I can’t decide anything right.

I regret doing things that I wish I hadn’t, and not doing things that I wish I had.  While other people can shrug their shoulders at their disappointing decisions or focus on the lessons learned for next time, I feel like I am kicking myself so often that my foot might as well remain permanently suspended in one giant kick.

Interestingly, part of the reason for my recent spate of bad decisions may be my crippling indecision in the first place.  Better decisions are based on better information, and so the more information I have, the better… right?  Well, maybe not.  Regardless of the decision at hand, the information available will usually be 1) incomplete and 2) imperfect.  For decisions with a built-in deadline, like what to buy people for Christmas or whether to go to Korea in the blazing middle of August, I often end up waiting until the last minute to see if any new/better information reveals itself to me.  Then, I make a decision that has the undecider’s aura of impulsivity about it — and cross my fingers.

Or sometimes (and this drives LB batshit crazy) I change my mind.  Back and forth, back and forth, until the deadline comes and essentially makes my decision for me.  I have a special tendency to do this when we have decided to go out for dinner but have not yet decided where to go.  Sure, an hour of flip-flopping after we leave the house makes for some pretty scenic drives and hungry stomachs, but there’s no real harm.

And for decisions that have no real external deadline, like, oh, what to do with (the rest of) my life?

**crickets**

I’m learning that given my track record, decisions that can wait forever… probably will.  It’s not as much “deciding not to decide” as it is shoving ideas into the “junk room” section of my mind and waiting until a brilliant bolt of enlightenment suddenly illuminates a clear path forward.

Which happens, like, NEVER.

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Lately I’ve become obsessed with one decision that has the trickiest of them all:  an unknown deadline.  I know it has a deadline, but I don’t know when that deadline is.  It may have already passed.  Maybe the decision itself isn’t even there at all, but whatever the case, I can’t find out until I decide.

This time the stakes are much, much higher than where to go for dinner.  There are huge consequences for a wrong decision in either direction, and this time I’m driving myself batshit crazy.  I don’t want to fall back on my usual Patented Strategies for Dysfunctional (Non)Decisionmaking, and yet I find myself doing so because I simply don’t know what else to do.

I think this is even harder for me because it feels like I am so utterly alone in this.

And because whatever I decide (or don’t), this cannot be one more thing that I regret.