Decisions

The other day I started writing a post about decisions. It began portentously:

Change is hard. And changes are generally preceded by decisions, which I find very hard. But what about when you decide, and you change, and then you're not quite sure whether you've done the right thing? Very very hard.

The intent, of course, was to make readers think I was talking about important matters, and then to upend those expectations:

I wasn't planning to change my running shoes. I was planning to walk out of the store with some version of the Mizunos I've worn for years. But then the eager young salesman got ahold of me. He made me walk up and down the room and put me on the treadmill and decided that I do not, in fact, have pronating problems, and suggested New Balance or Saucony.

Long story short: I got the Sauconys, despite long ago bad Saucony history, and now I have new pains in my upper right leg, so I'm wondering if I made a mistake.

Then I contrasted the spur of the moment Saucony decision with my agonizingly prolonged skincare switch from Clinique to Origins:

I thought about the change from Clinique to Origins for months. The saga of my sensitive skin is long and, well, sensitive, so I will just say that I fall for the ads that promise the most sensitive of eco-friendly skin-care products, and let me tell you that while the Body Shop may be eco-friendly, it is in no way sensitive-skin-friendly, so don't even think about it.

That's where I stopped writing, though I knew where I was going: another helpful saleswomen, pretty green tubs and bottles, maybe some links, and I look pretty good, only I'm not sure the moisturizer is, well, moist enough (god I hate the word moist, it is one of my least favorite words ever), though I do like the foaming cleanser.

Then, the other night, S and I made a big decision (we decided not to renovate our house right now, which is a very big and good decision). We weren't expecting to make a decision at all, and certainly not that one. I was reading a magazine related to my work and complaining about it. S made some suggestions about my work. Somehow we went from there, via finances, to our decision, which wasn't even something we had been considering. We had, however, been working over a lot of other issues without being able to come to any kind of satisfactory resolution. When we made that decision, all of a sudden a bunch of those issues fell into place, with total clarity.

The interesting thing is that this is exactly how our last two big decisions happened. We spent six years unable to decide whether to leave Red State Capital City Suburb, or rather deciding one way, and then deciding the other, and then deciding not to decide yet, and never feeling right about any of it. Then one night in London we started talking about the social geography of North London and ended up deciding to move back to East Coast Big City, and it was absolutely clear that we had finally made the decision, even though we had no inkling that a decision was even on the table when we began our conversation.

When I decided to leave my job, too, there was a lot of stuff going on that we couldn't handle, and then in one conversation--which did, I'll admit, involve much tears and screaming, on my part, and patience and forbearance, on the part of S--all of a sudden it was obvious that I had to leave my job, and then everything else suddenly made sense.

I feel like maybe this is what Blink is about, only I haven't read it. (OK, I just checked out Blink and it seems related but not exactly, as I'm not talking about first impressions, though I am talking about sudden and unexpected insight and clarity.)

Anyway, I'm not sure what this has to do with running shoes and moisturizer, and I'm not sure it has any replicatory potential, in fact, now that I've realized it, it probably won't happen again, but it was still kind of interesting to reflect on how we apparently make big decisions.