some thoughts worth considering

[winterbadger]

I don't agree with everything on this list of habits one should consider giving up but this piece of advice really hit home:

[You Need To Stop] Delaying Decisions.

Sometimes it doesn’t take as much strength to do things as it does to decide what to do.

Life is filled with difficult decisions.  As you move through life you will come up on many forks in the road where both paths look equally as promising.  The important thing is not which path you choose, but that you do in fact choose a path.

Deciding sometimes hurts.  Not knowing which path to take can be painful.  But nothing is more disheartening than never making a decision.  If you never choose a road, you will never know where it leads.  So when you’re faced with two equally good options, don’t be one of the people who choose the third option: to not choose.

Comments

[peatsmoke.livejournal.com]

That IS good advice. I guess the trick is finding a balance (ain't it always the way?); acting recklessly or impulsively isn't much better than being paralyzed by indecision. Then again, my own nature is so cautious -- recklessness is something I probably worry about more than is strictly necessary :)

[winterbadger]

Yeah, same here. Plus, there are some decisions I'm *sure* about (which are often wrong, but not more often wrong than others), so that just makes me doubt myself that much more when I'm *not* sure about a decision. "I was certain about X; I'm not certain about Y--shouldn't that be telling me something?" Possibly it should, but it may not be telling me that Y is a bad decision, just one that I don't feel as confident about--either because I don't feel I have as good information or because I feel more concerned about making a bad choice.

A lot of what goes into making me nervous about the study abroad choice is feeling that I am comfortable right now: I have a decent job, a nice flat, good friends nearby. And I'll be giving all that up, at least for a while, for an experience that I'm not sure whether I'll be very happy about it or not.

The two things that I *know* I want in my life are a home of my own (again) and a good, stable relationship with someone I love. I know there's nothing much I can do about the latter--it will just happen or not. But the former is something I could have now, if I wanted (given my savings and my current job). And I'm pretty sure that if I go taking on great mountains of debt ($50K for one year of study? plus probably the same again plus more if I go on to work on history, which I really want to do but am pretty sure I can't live off), I won't be able to have my own home any time soon.