I really don’t deal well with being in limbo, in any way, shape, or form. Once a decision is made, especially an unpleasant one, I’m much happier than in the process of making a decision.
That’s why the year of 2009 is going to have some of those less-than-pleasant memories when I look back on it. A hard decision has been in the works for a while, and still needs to be implemented, which won’t be pleasant either, but at least the first decision is made.
I’m not really going to go into detail here. Too much of it is personal, and really hard to explain without giving an extremely detailed context. Suffice it to say that it is something I have decided to do at least partially out of consideration for my mother’s feelings, and while some might say, in the context, that that is the wrong foundation, my answer is, it is exactly the right reason.
I refuse to be so arrogant that I put myself first on something that is, in at least one very significant way, not that important to me.
What has been interesting and revealing to me about my own character is that I make decisions in a fairly consistent way, especially when they are big decisions. I’ve done this before on money decisions, and I recognize certain patterns of behavior that I really need to take into account as I approach new decisions.
I don’t like being in limbo about a decision, but I also don’t like to make a decision without doing research and thinking things through. The more stressful a decision is, the more intense both these urges are. These are two very important character traits, and sometimes they put me in direct conflict with myself.
I like to wait and do lots of research and thinking about something, even to the point of thinking about it rather obsessively, until I get tired of it. (I never really feel like it is possible to do enough research.) Change can be difficult, and routine anchors me, so I like to turn things over in my mind quite a while before I make the actual change itself. One of the more interesting results is that from the outside it looks like I make decisions quickly. But nothing could be further from the truth, ’cause the truth is that I’ve been thinking about that decision for a very long time. When I actually do it, it quite often means that I had made the decision a long time ago and just decided it was time to implement.
Regarding the unhappy decision I referred to above, the first one is made, but now a second one awaits. The full implementation of the first decision has to wait until I’ve made the second one. Because it was an unpleasant decision (the second decision is not really unpleasant, just difficult, but the emotions that color the first decision are influencing the attitudes toward the second), I’d like to get #2 over with quickly.
Time to go into research mode. Unfortunately I also hate being rushed.
It’s times like this that my crafts are a wonderful refuge. When the tension gets to be too much, the steady repetition of my knitting soothes me, the smooth movement of the spinning wheel calms me, the rhythm of the weaving takes me out of myself, and the productive whirr of the sewing machine or the sewing needle pleases me. I’m very grateful for their power in my life.
Inside my head 