Just make up your mind already!

It’s snowing again.  One of those half assed snows where you get just enough to slick up the roads and mostly cover the grass, but there’s still grass there.  Like Mother Nature can’t make up her mind about whether (get it? weather) she should let it snow or not. 

Of course, that’s my luck.  Even Mother Nature can’t make up her mind.

I’m really tired of all this wishy washy crap from people.  My patience started running short on this with politicians.  At this point, I don’t really care if they make a right decision or a wrong decision; I just want them to make one.  No more studies, no more research groups, no more committees to discuss things, and no more consultants.

When I was a reporter, the city hired a consultant to tell them how to run the police station more effectively.  After tens of thousands of dollars, the consulting firm issued a report that determined the following:  since the police department receives most of its phone calls during the day, they should concentrate on keeping a larger number of deputies on duty during the day time business hours.  So all this tax money was spent on a moron who couldn’t figure out that sometimes crimes happen at night while people are sleeping and they don’t discover them until morning….so maybe, we want our cops on the streets at night when the crimes are actually happening, rather than just responding after the crimes are done.  I propose that perhaps the city could have just realized that keeping the city safe involves more patrols at night.

I’m currently the president of a charitable group.  We try to set meetings.  Wednesdays are good for one person, but not good for another.  The second and forth Tuesdays are bad for another.  And we hate Mondays.  But Fridays aren’t good either.  So I just pick a time and say screw it, screw it all.  Show up or don’t show up.  I’m not dealing with your schedules.  We waste too much time trying to accommodate everyone.

So, imagine there’s a swarm of killer bees larger than any swarm ever seen coming straight for your town.  Some of your neighbors are packing up to run.  Some of them are duct taping all the ventilation points of their homes.  You’re standing in the living room in front of an open suitcase and a roll of duct tape.  You see the merits of both actions.  But you just can’t decide.  So by the time the swarm hits, you’ve got half your house taped off and half your suitcase filled up…you’re dead.  To be fair, your neighbors who duct taped up all the ventilation points of their homes are dead too…they suffocated.

But you have to give them credit for actually doing something.

Do you want to go down swinging or do you want to go down staring at a fast ball going straight down the center while you balance a bat on your shoulder?

All I’m asking for is a decision.

Oh, and it doesn’t count as a decision if you take it back a couple days later.

Let’s all make a resolution for this new year.  No hopping back and forth between lines in a grocery store trying to guess which one will be faster.

If I ask you if you want to help feed the homeless over the holidays, don’t say “maybe.”  Go ahead and say what you really think:  “Sorry, I can’t stand the sights and sounds of all those toothless derelicts slurping away at running mashed potatoes and dripping gravy over their greasy chins, or picking at turkey bones with six years of crude caked under their fingernails.”

Which brings me to my theory on the cause of all this indecision.  It’s all about political correctness.  We worry far too much about what other people think of us.  I’m not gonna think less of you because you think the homeless are mentally ill disgusting and should be in secured wings of hospitals where they can be helped rather than out on the streets where all of us can see them.  I actually think some of them are fairly gross myself.  See.  We can all make a decision and have an opinion without hating—even though some of us are too close minded to face the fact that our opinions may be wrong and some of us are too afraid to make a wrong decision.

I think Gandhi once said that “People fail by indecision.”  Okay, he didn’t.  I just made that up.  It was a choice.  I made it.  It didn’t go over well.  I can face that.

What I can’t face is someone not being able to decide if they’re going to repeat that quote tomorrow or not.  For crying out loud, plagerize it.  It’s not like Gandhi’s going to rise from the dead and sue you for attributing a quote to him that never really existed.

DO IT!  Don’t think about it.  Don’t talk about it.  Don’t agonize over it.  Ease the stress of your life and just pull the trigger (not literally of course).

I can tell you that the day I made the decision to kick my husband out of the house was the best day of my life.  The five years before that I thought about it and never did anything about it, were the worst years of my life.

So do it.  Whatever you’re thinking about.  You want to ask someone out?  Well, so what if they say “no”.  Like that’s gonna hurt.  So what?  Or think about it and never know what the answer might have been.

It’s your choice.  Make it.