The buses of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority have a dubious reputation. More commonly known as SEPTA (if you slip and say septic you shan’t be corrected), the acronymic moniker is a Philadelphian profanity. I’m still haunted by my inaugural journey on the 2 from Francisville to Rittenhouse. I stood proudly at the corner of 17th & Thompson with my ponytail swinging across a heavy black backpack, glasses on, and stilettos swapped for goofy pink ASICS. I could have passed for a 6th grader finishing her first day of middle school, but I was just a burnt out grant writer thrilled to try a new mode of public transportation after a year’s allegiance to the subway.
Twelve minutes dissolved as I feverishly refreshed the SEPTA app to confirm that the bus was, indeed, en route, when suddenly, it rolled right past me, prompting my full sprint-and-flail down the street. Upon his screeching halt to stop this maniac from taking her sensational display all the way to Girard Avenue, the driver, in the most Philly way possible, opened the door to explain, “You didn’t make eye contact with me. How could I know you was waitin’?” And so began my volatile relationship with the bus.
To love the bus is to maintain an immature taste for chase. For all the times it’s left me high and dry, I’m too bewitched by the convenience to give up on it… on us. As if I needed more proof that you can pair me with any toxic entity and I will ignore the red flags to literally ride it til the wheels fall off.
Learning my partners’ flaws tends to doubly illuminate my own. Thus, it was no surprise when one of my most pivotal revelations in self-awareness occurred on the bus.
Among the bus’s many quirks is that you typically need to pull the yellow cord to request your stop the very second it moves from the stop prior. (It’s worth noting that this is quite arbitrary and subject to your driver’s mood.) Last Tuesday, as I prepared to do just that, I felt a familiar anxious pang toward deciding when is too soon or too late to pull the cord. Frozen by the grave decision at hand, I missed my stop. It was on the walk home from that one-stop-too-far that I realized the extent of my analysis paralysis.
I live in a constant state of fear-based inertia. I’ll observe even the most trivial choices, like when to pull the yellow cord to request my bus stop, and become immediately crippled by indecision. At best, this leaves me walking an extra block home on a nice day, and at worst, coiled in a shameful haze of lethargy.
Perhaps the root of my condition is work. I have been flaunting my work/life balance for exactly 2 years and 9 months. My hours are a true 8-4 (or 9-4 if you’re the worst, which I am) and I work from home on Mondays and Fridays. “It’s so nice. I get a lot of personal writing done,” I’d reflexively lie through a perfunctory smile. Only after I missed that bus stop and began dissecting my analysis paralysis did I realize the baselessness of my braggadocio.
A wealth of free time is surely, itself, wealth. The rich privilege to pursue to one’s heart’s content. I could be fluent in Italian and you could eat off my sparkling bathroom floor. I could cook colorful meals with organic produce while exploring underground jazz. I could read all of Proust’s work twice and freelance for Man Repeller.
Or I could weigh my options until my eyes cross and my ears smoke and the only things my hands have touched for eight straight hours are my cell phone and vibrator.
Excess freedom just makes me a lazier version of myself, which unfailingly becomes a self-loathing version of myself. In Joan Didion’s essay “On Self-Respect,” she proclaims:
To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.
Succumbing to daily indecision, however major or minor, impedes one’s natural development and maintenance of self-respect. Right when I think I couldn’t possibly putz around any more than I already do, I will somehow out-putz myself, adding a new handful of unkind words to the lexicon of my personal identity. Notice I haven’t posted to my blog in two months? I’ve started countless essays only to return to my Google Docs overwhelmed and unmotivated, which makes me wonder if I’m even meant to write at all. This seemed like an appropriate return.
In the five days that have passed since I began writing this piece, I have seen every Instagram photo under the hashtag #hotgirlsummer. Every gender reveal recap on Facebook (good year for girls). Every 10% off coupon in my inbox. Escapism is the lifeblood of analysis paralysis. When faced with the question, “What will I do today?” burying oneself in some hedonistic time-suck is the obvious anti-choice; and yet, it is still the choice I make.
I recall fondly days when I didn’t have the choice. My college experience was somewhat atypical. I rarely partied because I commuted for two years, worked a ton, held serious relationships, and was running at least five miles a day. There was something meditative about a true grind. I might not have initially cared about the jobs at hand, like selling donuts for 10 hours a day, but the kinetic energy informed my overall quality of life, which, in turn, made me care. My grades were good. I ran fast and long. I was an efficient, reliable worker. (The jury’s still out on the girlfriend thing.) Simply deciding each day to go to work, class, the gym, the library, etc. enabled quick, effective decision making in other areas of my life. I often fantasize about grad school or having a child because I’d be forced to be busy, which, I now know from experience on both sides of the coin, is the condition in which I thrive. Though, something tells me it shouldn’t take motherhood to get me to put my phone down.
I recently theorized that if I want to become a more decisive, regimented person, it could help to study the habits and mantras of those who already are. Outdoor Voices founder and CEO, Ty Haney immediately came jogging (at a recreational pace) into my mind. In the last week, I’ve read nearly every piece of internet literature about the spunky, blonde, dream queen. Haney has oft repeated in interviews a mantra she learned from ex-CFO of Dell, Tom Meredith: “Compression of time creates value.” But I’m too avoidant to even consider how I should fill my time, let alone compress it.
As I pieced through profiles in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Women’s Health, I remembered the blog post(s) I’m working on. The book I’m writing. The work for my actual job that pays me that needs done. The laundry piling up. And I realize that learning Ty Haney takes a large drip coffee with Fronks nut milk each morning is just another way to get out of it all.