Ref: previous entry

[johnpalmer]

Dang it, this will post BEFORE the later one. Oh well.

"Blank page syndrome" was the title, where I was talking about bad feelings about life right now, because of a problem that is really the same thing as "blank page syndrome".

If someone handed you an outline, and asked you to flesh it into an essay or report, you wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem as if you sat down to write the same essay or report. The blank page is so full of possibilities that it's threatening. Especially if you have to do something, and do it right.

My life is like that... full of possibilities and I don't know where or how to start. And, the reason they can be frustrating is that I'm already a bit underwater, and I need to get out, so there's a sense of urgency that's not normally present in 'just' blank page syndrome.

Anyway... that's the point of the title.

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

And that freedom worries me: when I can try anything, what should I do?

Huh. That's a very astute observation. It's when the possibilities are wide open that I have the hardest time making a decision; when things narrow to one or two options, it all becomes relatively straightforward: Do or don't.

[iamjw.livejournal.com]

See, and that's where it's different for me. Apart from things like choosing restaurants, I'm much better when the possibilities are wide open. When the choices narrow down I start to really worry about making the "right choice". When there are lots of choices I just don't sweat it, figuring that if I choose the wrong one I can always choose again.

This is particularly true of things like job searches. The last time I searched all I knew was that I didn't want to be in the job I was in. Location, grade, type of school - none of that mattered. It just had to be "other".

Leaping into the great unknown appears to make me happy. Considering that I spent the first 33 years of my life playing it safe may explain some of the excess baggage I have from those years

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Interstingly, I've jumped off a lot of metaphorical cliffs without parachutes in my life, too, especially when it comes to jobs, relocating and/or falling in love. But in a way those were binary decisions, too: Do, or do not. They didn't *feel* like the blank page John talks about, full of nothing but unknowable possibilities. They felt like "Do I jump? Yeah, hell, why not?"