Monday, April 14, 2008

indecision

so i changed my blog title. don't judge. i am allowed to be indecisive. at least in the blogosphere. (blogosphere - what does that even mean? don't think too much about it, says the new media studies student. just. don't). indecision does not come easy to me. and that's not something i'm proud of. cause for years i lived in a world (a sphere perhaps?) of black and white. and that's tough lemmie tell ya. tough.

gynormous life decisions have always come relatively easy to me, e.g., while i faltered for a week during christmas break during my first year of university, desperately wanting to drop out and become either a chef or a florist (much to my parent's chagrin and resounding "nos"), by the new year i knew i was going to be a phd student one day. and well. here we are. i would like to say it's the little things that get me and while that may be true, it is really the small to medium decisions that boggle me. such as: where should i eat for dinner instead of making dinner? should i like camping? how many drinks are too many? and, my personal favourite - should i continue to think about the health of my arteries or should i just give in and eat french fries all. the. time.? so far, arteries are winning. but i'm not happy about it.

i made a decision to write a short blog entry - something i can't seem to accomplish due to insufficient short-range wit and the fact that this blog may or may not be turning me into an even more rampant egomaniacal attention whore (could you talk more about yerself much?). i don't seem to be sticking to that decision. but maybe that is just it. as long as i have the big life decisions covered i can completely live a life devoid of simple decision-making. some decisions are easy: should i go on a reality t.v. show? no. would i like to? yes. do i like summer? yes. would i like it to be summer all the time. maybe also yes.

i have recently been thinking a lot about having one's own "take" on everything. which is essentially like having a position - perhaps deciding on an opinion - and then deciding to act upon that decision. my take. your take. everybody has a take. that is what makes people seem so annoying sometimes - your takes don't add up or they don't agree with your take. i also think decision-making is about confidence - the confidence to stand behind your take even though everyone else thinks it is spastically uninformed. in my youth - the heady days of "should i be a chef or a florist" - my take was the law. there were no other takes. my take ruled. that was what living in a world of black and white was like. i didn't see shades of gray. as i get older - and with a recent birthday under my belt - i realize that life is full of shades of gray. if we can cobble together a take, than that's something. enough perhaps. existing in academia teaches me this anew every. single. day. and this is not a bad thing. it is perhaps instead an altered mode of being.

so i made a decision to change the name of my blog. and i may or may not stick with it.

so there.

2 comments:

Shells said...

I think that the most flexible people are the strongest, and the strongest often the most flexible. I know indecision isn't the same as flexibility, but sometimes maybe it's a side effect?
Besides, flexibility is also key for balance right? And isn't that what we are always searching for?

jacks said...

shells - i think you have something here - flexibility is just another word for nothing left to choose. and i mean that in the not-song-related, uncheesiest way possible.

what i mean is, by not oscillating between what we think we SHOULD think/do/say and rely on what we know we must think/say/do because it is who we are but while acknowledging other people's "takes" we assume the position of flexibility because we recognize that the only person we can control is ourselves. no one else. no matter how hard one tries.

i am going to digress before this turns into a rant about finding one's authentic self. somebody stop me.