Everyday, we all make so many decisions that it’s no wonder that decision fatigue is a thing.
.
I’m definitely susceptible to decision fatigue but it doesn’t stop me from making those 35,000 decisions a day. Sometimes, I actually good about those decisions, including booking a flight to Switzerland for my first ever solo trip to Europe.
Whenever I start something different — a trip, a job change, anything new at all — I often start out with some disappointment.
I’m not sure why I get bothered by change, that way. Maybe I’m …
anxious,
stressed out,
cranky
expecting too much, or
fearful that any change might be a mistake, making things worse.
These days, at least, I know enough to EXPECT this reaction from myself. So, I’m ready for a spot of bother, when I’m starting something new, and I recover from it, more quickly.
Today, my 16-year-old son and I flew from Boston USA to Edinburgh, Scotland (via Philadelphia PA) for a six-day stay at the Fringe Festival.
Sure enough, when we got to our hotel, I felt that old, familiar disappointment. I think I was bothered, because it wasn’t the familiar place we stayed in, last year. Now, that change was deliberate; we WANTED something new. I knew to expect difference, going in. Nevertheless, when we made our way to our new hotel, I felt a strong sense of nostalgia, for our experience last year.
Well, the hotel last year DID have an AMAZING view, of Edinburgh Castle.
You can’t beat that, can you?
Today, after my son and I found out that our hotel room wasn’t ready, we walked around Edinburgh, trying to experience the old and the new, including lots of people attending the Fringe Festival. I did take some photos but — I’ll warn you — they’re not that great. I was jet lagged and my son gets cranky, sometimes, when I stop to take pictures.
However, maybe some of these images are good enough, for now.
That’s a photo I took from the new tram system in Edinburgh, which brought us from the airport to our hotel.
Oooops! I just got a message, on my laptop, saying that I was about to exceed my data transfer limit for my internet access in the hotel
Yikes! I’d better find out what I can do about that.
I may very well be disappointed about internet access here, especially if I compare that data transfer limit to every other hotel I’ve blogged from, since January 1, 2013.
Thanks to Mark Haddon, to my son, to the good people of Edinburgh, to those who are on the fringe, to people who do their best to let go of disappointment and unhelpful comparisons, to friends old and new, and to you — of course! — for taking the bother to be here, today.
Here it is, more than a year and a half since I’ve started blogging, and I’ve yet to include a song from one of my favorite bands, Steely Dan.
No shame about that, though.
As I’ve oft written here, shame — the feeling/belief that there is something fundamentally wrong about oneself — is toxic. Yes, shame gets in the way of growth, healing, and moving on. So, rather than shame myself for my inaction in the past, I shall now include a Steely Dan song, in today’s post.
Which Steely Dan tune shall I pick, out of all their great songs? I’m choosing the very one that was playing yesterday, as I walked to work: What a Shame About Me.
Steely Dan songs are often little stories, narrated by a protagonist who is rather unsavory and unreliable. In that way, they remind me of the poet Robert Browning‘s dramatic monologues, of all things.
Can you tell, at this point, that I was an English major in college? (I have no shame about that, either.)
My English-major-analysis skills tell me that What a Shame About Me is a tale told by somebody who has not done as well, in life, as some other people in his college class.
What do your analysis skills tell you, about the meaning of that song? To help with that, here are all the lyrics to What a Shame About Me:
I was grinding through my day gig
Stackin’ cutouts at the Strand
When in walks Franny from NYU
We were quite an item back then
We talked about her films and shows and CDs
And I don’t know what else
She said, “Yeah, Hollywood’s been good to me
But tell me – how about yourself”
I’m still working on that novel
But I’m just about to quit
I’m worrying about the future now
Or maybe this is it
It’s not all that I thought it would be
What a shame about me
She said, “Talk to me, do you ever see
Anybody else from our old crew
Bobby Dakine won the Bunsen Prize
Now he’s coming out with something new
Alan owns a chain of Steamer Heavens
And Barry is the software king
And somebody told me in the early 80’s
You were gonna be the Next Big Thing.”
Well now that was just a rumor
But I guess I’m doin’ fine
Three weeks out of the rehab
Living one day at a time
Sneaking up on the new century
What a shame about me
What a shame about me
I’m thinking of a major Jane Street sunrise
And the goddess on the fire escape was you
We both ran out of small talk
The connection seemed to go dead
I was about to say, hey, have a nice life
When she touched my hand and said:
“I just had this great idea
This could be very cool
Why don’t we grab a cab to my hotel
And make believe we’re back at our old school”
I said babe you look delicious
And you’re standing very close
But this is Lower Broadway
And you’re talking to a ghost
Take a good look it’s easy to see
What a shame about me
What a shame about me
Guess what? I have a college reunion coming up next month. And, because of the fancy-shmancy, hoity-toity college I attended, I could very easily compare myself to my most distinguished, renowned, and admired classmates, and find myself wanting.
But that’s just an automatic, unhelpful cognitive distortion (see Comparisons, in this list).
When I go to my college reunion in September, I resolve NOT to compare myself to others there. Certainly, I will NOT say this:
“What a shame about me.”
If I do choose to declare something about myself at my college reunion, what word could I use in place of “shame” in that sentence? Perhaps I could use a word for the opposite of shame, instead. But, what IS the opposite of shame? Is it pride? Acceptance? Peace? Comfort?
Hmmm. None of those words fit, as an easy replacement. I mean, people don’t say, “What a Pride (or acceptance, peace, or comfort) About Me.”
Maybe I need a different sentence.
In any case, here are some things that HAVE been about me, lately:
What a world about me, don’t you think?
Thanks to my boyfriend Michael (who was responsible for the last three images), to Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, to Robert Browning, to my college classmates, to people who are doing their best to let go of shame (and other unhelpful things), and to you — for whatever words, feelings, thoughts, etc. are about you, today.
I don’t know … if I MUST choose a number … it would definitely be a number that has a six in it, maybe somewhere between a 60 and a 65?
Hmmmmm. With those kinds of numbers, my messiness is WNL — Within Normal Limits, as we say in the therapy biz. While I might modulate towards the messy, it doesn’t interfere with my functioning.*
Yes, I’m not remarkably messy. Since I’ve been an adult, nobody has
refused to live with me,
given me ultimatums,
done an intervention,
gotten mad at me,
suggested I get help, or
otherwise made any kind of major fuss* about my measure of messiness.
However, I feel like they might, at any moment. That’s because I have labelled — filed, stamped, indexed, briefed and debriefed — myself as
Well, I’m working on taking a different road through the woods, now. Maybe I can replace the “too” in that label with a more modulating word, like:
MODERATELY MESSY
But you know what? When you are trying to rewrite an old script, it doesn’t make sense to restrict your vocabulary. Let’s open up the alphabet, for this portion of the post, shall we?
As I was saying, maybe I can replace the “too” in that label with a healing, more helpful word, like
ACCEPTABLY MESSY
or even better:
ADORABLY MESSY
Magnificent!
Let’s see if Google Images has anything to contribute* for the word “messy” at this point:
And let’s see if I can use any of my own photos* to end* this post.
Well, if you were to ask Michael which of our two cats is messier, he would definitely choose the one on the left, Harley.
He still looks pretty neat to me.
Thanks to my mother, to Patrick McGoohan and The Prisoner, to Robert Frost, to the Berenstein Bears, to Justin Boyd at invisiblebread.com, to Mark A. Hicks (for the pig illustration), to people and other creatures ranging from 0 to 100 on the neat-to-messy scale, and — even though my thanks have already included you — MAJOR thanks* to you for moseying, moving, materializing, or otherwise making it here, today.
* thesaurus.com has no suggestions beginning with the letter “m” for this word. Believe me, I checked.
