decision fatigue, etc.

I just automatically went through at least half a dozen steps. I opened up the link to my blog and signed in. I opened Google Drive and clicked on the folder where I keep daily writing and rambling. I opened a blank document. I named it 2aug2015. And all of the sudden I couldn’t even remember what I was doing or why. But I just came back to myself and remembered: OH YES, I’m writing.

I was thinking today about how the weight of making decisions is exhausting. It leaves me feeling drained the same way that talking to too many people drains me. Decision fatigue - actually, I’m certain that’s a thing. I think I read somewhere recently that you can be more productive if you eliminate unnecessary decisions. You can do things like wear the same outfit/style every day, or make the same breakfast every morning. Eliminating those choices gives you a little more capacity for making other decisions. And I think I understand that. For example, I love thinking about what to make for dinner, but if I’m overwhelmed in other areas of life, I just...can’t. I can make beans and rice or fried eggs on toast or I can order pizza. So while information and work are infinite, our decision making brains are not.

I read an article this morning from the New York Times blog about how walking in nature changes our brains. “Most of us today live in cities and spend far less time outside in green, natural spaces than people did several generations ago. City dwellers also have a higher risk for anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses than people living outside urban centers, studies show.” Yikes. It always floors me that simple physical activities can have such an influence over the mental and emotional state, something that seems so mysterious to me.

I’ve never thought of myself as a city person, but I’ve spent the last four years living full-blown urban life. And I have to say, after a few months living back in Wellfleet, I am longing for being someplace where I can walk everywhere and can go weeks on end without getting in a car. The exchange for being somewhat cut-off from nature is that you don’t have to seal yourself into a box on wheels every day.

But here, there’s something pretty wonderful in waking up to trees swaying outside your window. And there’s also something wonderful in strolling into town over an island and salt marsh, through scrub oak and pitch pine groves, and without fail, seeing hundreds of fiddler crabs scurrying down their perfectly round holes.

This summer has felt something like a hazy dream, all the days and nights blurring into one long day and one long dark starlit night. I saw a sunset last night that was wild and fiery. I felt sad for no particular reason. And I felt loved and safe and afraid and hopeful, all at once. When I’m a jumble of emotions, sometimes I try to explain each one, rationalize whyI felt this and what caused me to feel that. I think I told J last night that my blues-y feelings were caused by decision fatigue. But really a walk in the park can make you less stressed and a day in a car can make you more stressed and there are a mess of things we feel for no reason at all. Because we’re made up of brains and nerves and muscles. And the mess of feelings is called being alive.

*Update: the mark of my hazy brain is that I wrote about mental fatigue just one post ago, and then about decision fatigue here, which might be the exact same thing. Also, I wrote here about an article I read recently, which is the article I just wrote about in the previous post. So there's that.