Spoiled for choice.

Dear blog,

I frequently feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of choices that I have in my life. This has big implications (still not knowing what I want to be when I grow up when I'm already in my 30s, not knowing what I'd want to study if I returned to school) and little ones (how do you decide what to pay attention to when there's so much good stuff all around?). Because I lack the basic skills of adulthood, I get freaked out when I think too much about schooling and career oriented stuff, so I'm going to devote this post to things less consequential in nature.

When I was in high school, I'd sit in my classes and just write for a solid hour and a half. Had my scribblings been even tenuously related to the subjects I was purportedly studying, I would've been an A++ student. As it was, I churned out one nonsensical stream-of-consciousness rambling after another (kinda like this blog!) and raked in a steady stream of D's and F's. The point is, I might have been concentrating on the wrong thing, but I could concentrate. Not just on writing, but on books, movies, and albums from start to finish. Blame it on what you will (*cough*THEINTERNET*cough*), but I just don't seem to have that kind of focus in me anymore.

Part of the problem is just being totally spoiled for choice. How are you supposed to find new favourites when there's so much easy access to Whatever Comes Next? I constantly feel like I'm a beat behind on finding the next great new thing, and so I can never fully enjoy whatever great new thing happens to be right in front of me at the moment. If I'm exposed to a band that I haven't heard before, and I love them, I can't just sit back and take in their work. I have to start searching for another band to love. It's a pattern that makes no logical sense, and yet I can't seem to break the habit.

I think the solution might be to find two or three critics whose opinions I can reliably count on to more or less align with my own, and let everything else fall by the wayside. And maybe take up meditation or something, I don't know.