Imminent Disaster

A big, life-altering mistake is in my future. It must be. It has to be. With all the important big-girl decisions I'm making and options presented to me and more to come in the following months, the odds are in favor of at least one catastrophe. With this ominous storm cloud of foreboding looming above my head, every choice I encounter, every minute fork in the road of daily life, begs the question: is this it? Is this the disaster that has grown tired of waiting to happen? As a result, my waffling over even the most trifling matters (I have been known to stand in the salad dressing aisle of the supermarket for well over twenty minutes at a time, picking up and putting back the same bottle more times than the kid in the cereal aisle is told by his mother to take the Lucky Charms out of the cart and NO you cannot get another bag of cookies) has escalated to unbearable levels. I'm so waffle-y that I might as well bathe in maple syrup (a tasty, yet rather messy proposition) or open a breakfast joint (or maybe just squeeze myself in a hot iron).

Utterly paralyzed by my inability to settle on a final verdict on anything and everything these days, I'm left wondering: is whatever dire or not-so-dire consequence that may arise from a wrong choice as deleterious to my wellbeing as the anxiety of trying to prevent it? Maybe I should just let go, trust my instincts, and listen to the quiet little voice inside of me. Problem is, these days even my inner voice seems to change its mind from one moment to the next. So the question remains: is this a crisis of identity, not knowing how exactly I want to shape my life and myself by the choices I make (or refuse to make for fear of a wrong turn leading down a back alley to a dumpster full of doom) or a crisis of confidence, an inability to trust myself, that I know what I should do and what I want and what is ultimately best?

In other news, my existential crisis has lead to a flourishing of culinary creativity. It seems vegetables and seasonings are the only mediums with which I feel free to let my instincts take over work these days, rather than with blood and serum, patient numbers and test codes, life choices and salad dressing selections.