Skip to main content

Indecision

I was putting some dirty dishes into the dish washer this evening and all I could think to myself while I was doing it was "I hope the few dishes in the washer now are dirty."  Because if they were clean then Erin would come home and ask "Why did you put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher?" with that gently curious, yet slightly accusatory tone.  You know, the one which says, "What were you thinking‽"

While I was thinking about this I also realized just how easy it is to question yourself into stagnation.  I could easily have thrown up my hands and decided to just leave the dishes alone.  I'll ask Erin later or, better yet, simply let her take care of it.

I'm finding that people are so worried about offending someone that they quickly decide not to do anything.  Instead of telling Erin that she's irritated me (this is simply an example, she hasn't ever irritated me of course) I would let it go and ignore the problem.  Of course, it will just irritate me more the next time.

This certainly spills over into my church life.

When planning our WATCH program where I'm co-teaching a bible study to teens, I continue to say "whatever you'd prefer" to the person I'm teaching with.  I'm trying to let her really make her own decisions and make the experience her own.

Beyond those platitudes though, the reality is that I'm also trying to make her happy.  I'm trying to let the co-leader make the decisions so that I don't need to. It's always easier to blame the decision maker, and I sure don't want that person to be me.

Those who know me though, know that isn't entirely true.  I will accept blame even when it isn't my fault.  I also feel quite free with almost anyone at church to tell them what I'm thinking when asked.

My point though, is that it's very easy to stop making decisions for fear of upsetting someone impacted by the decision.

The bigger problem though is that by not making decisions we quickly fall into a stupor and never accomplish anything in life beyond watching the latest episode of Doctor Who.

Peace,
+Tom

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Using an Array of Objects in C++

 I've been programming for years (over 35 at this point, which is crazy  to think about). My career right now is much more Software Architecture, and much less Software Developer, but I still get some time to write out GraphQL APIs in TypeScript, Vue 3 UIs, GitLab pipelines, and just generally making "big" decisions and helping make them a reality. It's nice every now and then to come across different articles and ideas that get me to remember life in college when I was using C++. Who would have thought C++ was the "hot new thing" right now (though I suppose it's more like Rust and Go, both great languages as well). One of the things I find frustrating with most technical posts is where they focus on the "how do I build an app" and not so much on "how do I do this one slightly useful thing". I figured I'd throw one together what was front of mind, using user attributes for permissions (i.e., Attribute Based Access Control - ABAC) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Red-Gate SQL Compare

Every now and then I come across a program that becomes so ingrained in my daily work that I hardly know how I'd get by without it.  I'll probably break down a couple over the next few days, but for database work, I have never found anything as good as Red Gate's SQL Compare and SQL Data Compare .  Essentially these tools let you compare two SQL Server databases (all objects, users, permissions, functions, diagrams, anything) and update changes to whichever database you want.  This is amazingly useful for deploying database changes to a test or production environment (do it to production with ridiculous care, even though it will generate a SQL Script for you and run all updates in one transaction), and making sure everything is synchronized. For releases we can just generate the compare script, confirm that the changes match the updates we want to go out, and store it all in one place with the release details.  This is true for both the structure and the d...
6 comments
Read more

Kids Activities

I find myself often in a situation where it's some morning, I have the kids for the afternoon, and I'm not sure what to do with them. We could go to a movie, or play Legos, but living near Washington, DC, I want the kids to love the museums as much as I do, or to see what else is going on. This Sunday, while my wife was travelling, I took the kids to the Chocolate Festival in Old Town Fairfax. I didn't even know there wad an Old Town Fairfax, much less a chocolate festival. It was okay overall, but the best was seeing any type of chocolate you could imagine, and letting the kids pick something for themselves and their teacher. For finding cheap or free stuff going on nearby with the kids, I have to say About.com has consistently been the best. I tried si.edu (the Smithsonian Website) which is also good, but a little hard to navigate, partly because they have so much going on. At About I did a search of what to do with my kids this weekend, and a bunch of items came ...
Post a Comment
Read more