Too Many Choices and Too Few Choices

[jamesq]

bow_bitch was writing about home renovations and the risk of becoming flummoxed by the insane number of options we have.

This happens to me a lot. I suspect it's a symptom of anxiety.

One of my Tilley hats got torn and I needed to mend it. Two inch tear, just needed a hand stitching to get the sides together. Something most of my A&S friends could do in 10 minutes without having to engage three neurons. I, OTOH, don't really do stuff like that. However, it was too small of a job for me to attempt to "trade" with someone. Like asking someone to come over to wash a dish because you don't know how. You feel ashamed just for asking.

It was a small repair, something that any human being with two steady hands should be able to do, so I figured I'd fix it myself. I went to the local fabric store to get some thread and needles. Neither of these things is terribly expensive, so the risk of buying the wrong thing is negligible. At worst, I'd have some supplies I'd give to someone who could use it.

I looked at the selection of needles and see there's a million different kinds. Big needles, small needles, needles with curves, vibrating glow-in-the-dark needles. Hmm. I put off the needle purchase for the time being and go to the thread aisle.

There's a million and a half different kinds of threads. Some are polyester, some are cotton, some are heavy duty and others are fancy. And of course they come in every imaginable colour.

Now if there was one kind of needle and one kind of thread, I'd have been in and out of the store, happy with my purchase and well on my way to mending my hat. Instead, I walked out empty handed, convinced that I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

Too many choices put me in a mental space that made me focus on how much I didn't know, instead of how much I didn't need to know.

A few days later I picked up one of those $5 mending kits they sell in the grocery stores (they sold three - I picked the one with a spool of thread close to my hat's colour). It has ten little spools of thread, three identical needles, a couple safety pins and scissors that couldn't cut air. I sat through a Weight Watchers meeting (my first in months. Back on the wagon again, and miraculously still under - barely - 250. Yay me) and hand sewed my hat together. I took my time, tied a lot of knots, doubled and then tripled the seam and finally achieved something that looked like it would work.

Would someone more familiar with needle and thread have done a better job in half the time? Probably, but I did get it done. No thanks to the massive aisle at Fabricland.

Of course, this underlined the fact that I have a ton of chores to do that require me to do things outside my comfort zone. It's not that I'm lazy, it's that they make me anxious. The biggest one is fixing a linen closet that needs to have some rotting wood torn out of it and replaced. I should have done it months ago, but it sits there empty. Ugh.

Having anxiety and also having a high measure of self-awareness puts me in the unfortunate position of being able to identify anxiety-provoking situations and either doing something about them or chewing on the bitter knowledge that I can't - the problem is simply too big.

The former happened on Friday after archery practice.

Normally we all go to a nearby gastro pub to chat/drink/eat and basically socialize. Sadly they were closed this week, which we discovered when we pulled into the parking lot and saw the lights were off.

Aside: This pub is in the middle of the same industrial park that the archery range is in, so it is often empty on Friday nights (unless there's a hockey game or equivalent playing). This is fairly atypical for drinking establishments.

We discussed our options for a few minutes and finally decided to go to Boston Pizza near the Ikea. A bit distant, but not too bad for anyone there. We got there in time to discover it was Karaoke night.

I'm fine with the idea of karaoke, and even do a lot of "singing" in Rock Band, but the idea of doing it in public is naturally anxiety producing. Also, when people pressure me into doing something like this, my instinct is to dig my heals in.

The usual peer pressure was on display, none of which would have made a dent. I finally relented when I realized (internally, on my own) that this was a dreaded anxiety issue. Now I had to face it or admit I can't solve my anxiety issues.

I sang Copacabana.

I'll have my anxiety problems licked eventually. The current ETA is 2117.

Comments

[petranef.livejournal.com]

You really do need to learn how to do all the basic stuff, so that when the world ends, you can survive. I plan on buying a book about how to do all those things some day. ;)

[bow-bitch.livejournal.com]

Its very easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of options available. One thing I did to address the anxiety about making the wrong choice was to decide that I would trust my decision to be a correct one. By making a deliberate decision to trust myself, I short-circuited the anxiety of making a poor choice. Hey, if trickery works on my subconscious, I'm not above using it!

[jamesq]

That's why I learned how to shoot a bow!