Does This Shade Of Varnish Go With My Eyes?

Here's a thing about me you probably didn't know. I? Am wishy washy. I know. You're taken aback. But it's true.

It's not really that I can't make up my mind. It's just that I spent so many years being a world class fuck-up that I don't want to waste any more time on mistakes.

Yannow what I mean?

I get so bogged down in trying to make the right decision, that I become consumed by self-doubt. And then I don't make any decision at all.

Flutter once called it "paralysis by analysis" and a more apt characterization I've never heard.

The more I pro and con, the more I hem and haw. It's a problem. A real problem.

Some of you know that I am in a weird sort of mid-life stasis; a holding pattern if you will. My life as the Mother of small children is over and now it's time to move onto the next phase.

The problem is...I made absolutely no provisions for this eventuality.

When one is deep in the throes of raising small children, it's hard to see beyond anything except naptime.

So now? I'm exceedingly bored with my life. I feel a little superfluous, but also, srangely, like a thing that people use every day, but scarcely notice it's existence because it's just always been there.

When I was a kid, we had this coat rack in our house, just inside the front door. It was there for years, until one day, on a whim (or maybe my mother just decided it was time people started using the coat closet, I don't know) my mother moved it.

But did people start using the coat closet? No. The coats piled up in a sad little heap in the floor where the coat rack had once stood. It had been there so long, doing the same thing, faithful and uncomplaining...that nobody noticed when it wasn't there anymore.

I don't want to be a coat rack.

I very much need something to do, and I've written a plethora of posts pondering my post parenting prerogatives. Say that five times real fast.

Anyway, everything I consider seems, for one reason or another, to be more trouble than it's worth. The logistics alone keep me up at night. I honestly don't know how working Moms do it. I don't want to know how they do it because I don't want to have to put that much effort into getting through each day.

SIGH.

So overwhelmed with details, I do nothing.

This has been going on for several years now.

((Paralysis By Analysis))

A couple days ago, I got a phone call from one of my best friends. They moved to the other side of the city a couple years ago, and now because of our increasingly hectic lifestyles, we rarely get to see one another.

She is in the very same place that I am. However, she is a much more decisive person than I. She doesn't waste a lot of time worrying about making the wrong choice. She doesn't see mistakes waiting to be made, she sees opportunites.

And she has decided to go to Beauty School.

Would it surprise you to hear that for twenty years, I've considered going to beauty school?

It sounds like so much fun, doesn't it? And I need fun in a bad way, ladies. A bad, bad, bad way. But it would also serve a profusion of other purposes (I like alliteration, shoot me).

It would indulge my creative side as well as my love of all things girly.

It would get me out of the house.

It would give me the means to make my own money for the first time in fourteen years.

It would challenge me.

It would do all this without placing too much stress or responsibility on my shoulders.

When I worked for a large National Financial Services Company, I would sometimes wake up in a cold sweat, realizing I hadn't dotted an "i" or crossed a "t", the consequences of which were expensive and far reaching.

No thank you.

I hold the life and the emotional well-being of two someday adult persons in my hands and that's quite enough responsibility for me.

I know I have the knack. My Mom was a hairdresser for nearly 40 years. I picked up a thing or two. I can be licensed in just 9 months. I think it's a good idea and I want to do it.

Until I start really thinking.

Does that mean I'm giving up my identity as a writer? Or my hopes of writing a book someday? Does the fact that I'm willing to sacrifice my more cerebral self to indulge the vanities of my clients (and myself, to be frank) mean I'm renouncing all my ideals? Does the fact that I'm willing to do this for some fun and personal satisfaction mean I'm a horrible, shallow, vapid person?

Goddamn that thinking thing. Is there a way to shut that off?

Why can't I just make a decision and GO?

Please excuse me while I grow a few extra arms. Those coats can get pretty heavy.