TRIVIAL CHOICES. A HATE STORY.

It all started about three years ago when I decided to get a haircut.  I adore an adorable pixie.  It was summer, it would get the hair off my neck.  Did I care if I could pull it off?  NO.  I wanted it.  So I did it.  Fast forward a year when a work acquaintance told me I "looked like somebody's mom."  Besides the fact that I am somebody's mom (and fine with it), this in my head was the equivalent of her saying "Nice mom jeans, mom."  I haven't cut it since.  The problem now is that I can't decide how to get it cut.  For a year and a half now I've been buying magazines, clipping pictures, spending far too much time thinking about it, and far too much money (I could have had three to five haircuts for what I paid for those rags).  And dude, my split ends are beyond horrific.  They look like trees. 
Then we bought a house.
And it was a blank slate.
And I went a little crazy.
I think I might have 10,000 or so images on my hard drive of interior design shots.  I'm not even kidding.  Some people have pr0n, I have Apartment Therapy and Ikea.
But my point is this:  making decisions in the current market can make you unhappy.  I know this because somebody was way ahead of me.  There are studies and many books and articles on the subject.  It's called choice overload and it causes paralyzation, depression and fatigue. 
But even before that, Thoreau was onto something.  Something huge.
And before that, any religion with a poverty vow.

I should just cut my hair and not worry about whether or not it makes me feel old or buy furniture and not worry about whether or not it was the sofa. (The previous sofa we bought for our apartment was not the sofa.)  I've had more anxiety about hair, clothes, wall paint and furniture in the last five years than I ever had about my decisions to get married, have a kid, get a dog, choose a car, or move to another city/state/almost country.
So I'm just going to paint the wall a color.  I can paint over it.  There's no need to go to Home Depot seventeen times and collect 18 million paint chips. 
I'm going to try to have less stuff, and to simplify.  Lots of people are way ahead of me on this as well. But I think a lot of other people are at this point, people who watch HGTV and shop at big box stores and use ivy-themed wallpaper copiously in their interiors without irony.  Which may explain why the square footage per person, per house has gone down in the last few years.  And small is the new big.
So I'm not going to have a panic attack because maybe that chesterfield was the thing that defined my soul and now I have a Petrie, and I can never ever buy a new sofa.  Ever.  (Right.)
It'll save my sanity for sure, and possibly help save the planet.

Update:  6/1/10 still no haircut.