maybe Robert Frost was onto something
On decision paralysis and crossroads
Something that challenges me in times of transition: decision making. Whew. I’m not sure if I’ll ever go back to school for a doctorate, but regardless, I should already have one in overthinking. I’d wager that I’ve wasted at least a full year of my life overanalyzing. It’s what my anxious brain does naturally. When I’m not doing well, I prolong nearly every decision because they just feel like too much. Ever heard of Schrodinger’s cat? I’m allergic, but that cat will live (or not live? is this metaphor working?) the length of all nine lives with me if I’m not careful.
It’s not always a bad thing. If you want a brain that can map out 300 possible outcomes for one decision, boy, have I got a deal for you. In brainstorming or writing or emergency planning, my brain can be an asset. Not so much for decisions like which career path to follow or where to live.
My life has handed me tons of material to dissect over the last few years. I left a career that felt predictable and comfortable and stepped into the truly insane world of trying to be a full time writer. Lol at me. I’ve been trying to decide where I want to live and how I’ll get there for over a year—so long that it’s easy to miss that I’ve chosen to live where I am for all that time. My indecision is a decision, it’s just not one I’m making actively. Staying is a choice. Doing something unknown is hard.
You know the Robert Frost poem that starts with “two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / and sorry I could not travel both / and be one traveler?” It’s really hard for me to be one single traveler. I want to go to both restaurants. I want to live in the woods and on the beach. I want a big city and a small one. I want to be a writer and also have a stable career. I want to peek into several possible relationships but I don’t want to give up my independence. I want to stay and I want to go. I want help and I want to figure it all out myself.
Here are a bunch of crossroads I’m currently pacing in front of: Do I continue on the poetry path or return to it being a hobby and settle back into a normal job? Do I move somewhere in Oregon or Washington for a while; or do I stay in the Twin Cities, a place I love and know I’ll eventually come back to either way? Do I keep this car that’s on its sixth expensive issue in three months, or do I try to buy something else (with what money???!?!)? Do I spend my time grinding for some comfort cash or do I put all my focus on the writing career that continues to feel right on the verge of a major positive change? Do I charge $100 or $150 for my next workshop?
Fun fact: Most people misunderstand the Frost poem. The end of the poem is a bit more widely shared: “two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / and that has made all the difference.” If you’re anything like me, you get really excited about that “and that has made all the difference” part. Reading that line makes it seem like there was a “right” road to take—that there is a correct answer to every ambiguous question. Even more, it feels like it’s arguing for always forging your own path.
Here’s the thing, though. There is only the choice you make. None of the others are real.
The Road Not Taken isn’t what we think it is. Turns out, Robert Frost wrote that poem literally making fun of his friend who, on their walks in the woods, would pause where two paths met and waste a ton of time debating which one to walk on. It was supposed to be a joke between friends, but instead, it ended up understood as sound advice—the kind that gets tattooed on a million bodies.
Frost was making a statement about the futility of debating between choices. Sure, we should think about our decisions, but at the end of the day, we can never really turn back. We waste so much time and energy on weighing our options. It steals the time and energy we might have spent in our decision and punts it down the road to an undefined future. There will never be a right time for anything. No one is going to tell us which way to go. We’re not going to come to a realization later with the same information we have now. We have to make a choice—and then another, and another, and…
Sometimes I think about all the directions a situation might take so intensely I really start to believe that I can step in and out of different realities. That I can watch them all play out. That I can choose the best possible outcome. That I can head back and meet myself at the crossroads with more information.
I wonder about the version of me who still works in higher ed. I wonder which students hang out in her office, which conference she’s presenting at next, how many tabs are in her planning spreadsheets. I wonder who I could have been if I had looked for jobs out of state after grad school instead of staying in what was safe and familiar. I wonder what my life might look like if I still worked for Habitat for Humanity. If I never found poetry. If I was still in a messy in-between with people I’ve loved. If I had dated the right kind of person earlier. Sometimes it is really, truly hard for me to accept that none of those versions of me are real—at least not here. There is no reality in which I’m not a poet right now. There’s no version of me currently climbing the higher ed ladder, no move I should have made, no relationship I’m supposed to be in.
Crossroads are all over in our lives. Career choices, relationships, living situations, politics, how our furniture is arranged, the way we eat, how we spend our time, whether or not we have kids, education, death and birth, endings and beginnings—everything. It’s impossible to live a life that doesn’t ask us to choose.
I’m curious about which crossroads you’re finding yourself at now. I’m curious about how you talk to yourself as you make a choice. I’m curious how long you’ve been weighing your options.
If this is something you struggle with too, you might find community in my upcoming writing workshop co-facilitated with Carson Elliot. It’s called Crossroads: Honoring the In-Betweens, and we start on September 11. At $75 total, this is likely the lowest priced workshop I’ll offer for the foreseeable future, and I really encourage you to join us! For six weeks, we’ll meet every Monday night (7:30-9:30 CDT) and examine the choices in our lives. Maybe at the end we’ll have some clarity on what we want. Maybe we’ll just spend more time thinking but at least we’ll have some cool poems about it.
If you’re interested, you can learn more about the workshop here. If you’re ready to register, this is the place to do it.
In the end, it doesn't really matter which path you take—just that you make a decision. I hope that this workshop can give you the space you need to feel it out—whatever your crossroads may be.
Love ya. Rooting for you.
-Tristan
