Choices

A few weeks ago I finished reading a book called "The Paradox of Choice." It's about how more choices actually leads to higher amounts of unhappiness, which is basically why modern life kind of sucks sometimes. For example, if you got went into a bank and had to sit in line for an hour, you wouldn't be happy about it, but you wouldn't regret it as much as if there were two lines, and you got in the slower one. I'd be a lot less picky about taking girls out on dates if there were only like, 5. But because there are so many possibilities, people have a tendency to wonder about all of the other options that might be out there, which makes them either too afraid to commit to a choice, or they choose and end up dissatisfied with their choice.

So I read this book and was understandably freaked out. Luckily, the author isn't some sort of twisted despair monger and was kind enough to include some suggestions in the back about how to deal with having to making tons of decisions and deal with regret. One of the suggestions was to write down 5 things that you're grateful for everyday. It's supposed to help you realize that your life isn't actually too bad, so I decided to give it a try.

And then the clouds opened up and God said "I hate you Adam."

That's basically been this semester so far, and I'd complain about it more if it wasn't so funny. And it's only funny in the sense that so many annoying, crappy things keep happening that it gets kind of ridiculous sometimes (for the record, I think people who laugh about their problems are slightly psychotic). Here's the run down:

- I worked a 10 hour shift two Sundays ago from four in the the morning till 2 in the afternoon, and because it was Sunday, all the shops were closed so I didn't get to eat all day.
- The next day my hard drive got erased.
- There's a dead mouse in my kitchen, somewhere.
- I got called in to work at three in the morning.
- On the same day, the water radiator broke so I had to take a freezing cold shower.
- Because my financial calculator was set up incorrectly, I failed my Family Finance test.
- Because I was so mystified at how hard my Finance test was, I was 45 minutes late to my Psych class and and therefore only had 5 minutes to take the in-class exam that I didn't know about.
- My boss told me that I talk too much at work (which isn't so much an unfortunate event as it is me being retarded, but still).

I didn't write this list to get pity, I just think it's weird that this all decided to happen to me within the last two weeks. It's been slightly hard sometimes to think of five things every day that I'm grateful for (and it's also made me realize that I'm disproportionately grateful for food for some reason) but I really do have a good life. I've got good parents, good friends, I'm educated, and I'm LDS, which means that if I got hit by a bus tomorrow I'd at least go out in a Celestial blaze of glory and get to relax. I guess I'd still be single but since I'd be dead I'd never get the hiccups again, which would make the whole thing almost worth it.

Watching lots of classic movies also makes up for the general crappiness, I've decided (also, blogger is telling me that crappiness, is not a word, which is false). At BYU I've noticed that there are roughly 4 categories of movies that any given student here enjoys:

- Disney movies
- Summer blockbusters
- Anything with Will Smith in it
- Psych (seriously, what's the deal with all the hype around this show? There's no reason for him to pretend to be psychic, or why that would even function as a plausible explanation for why he knows things, because no one believes in psychics).

Not that there's anything wrong with any of these kinds of movies (except for Psych, screw that show), it's just nice to watch something else for a change. There's just something about old movies that pulls you in. Like when I watched Vertigo with Brownwyn and Jennie (well, Sadie was there too, but she was asleep, which hardly counts) last week. When the movie ended, they threw several pillows and the remote at the TV. If they hadn't been sitting on the couch, I'm sure they would have thrown that too. But that's what a good movie should do. It should get you involved.

So yeah, in conclusion, Jimmy Stewart is awesome.