River: Aha! moment: what I'm afraid of

[mdlbear]

I was sitting here trying to figure out why I feel the same sense of dread about making phone calls, upgrading servers, and moving my email from rahul.net to dreamhost. And then it hit me:

I'm afraid of doing anything irrevocable.

It probably even has a lot to do with why I put furniture together with screws and adjustable shelf brackets instead of glue and dovetail joints. I'm terrified of making some horrible mistake and being stuck with something I can't fix. It certainly has a lot to do with my fear of paperwork, and my inability to make hiring decisions the one time I attempted to be a manager. It has everything to do with the financial non-decisions behind our current trainwreck.

It relates to phone calls because I can't take back or even edit my words. I can't even take back the fact that I've made the call and the other person has answered it.

In retrospect it's surprising that I do anything irrevocable at all. I was terrified when I married Colleen all those years ago.

Not sure how the heck knowing this helps me move my email service. But that has to be done, and this week. Deadlines help, even though I often miss them.

(10:10 Just realized that the fear of doing something irrevocable has, on several occasions, been all that's kept me alive. Maybe I don't want to cure it altogether.)

Comments

[mdlbear]

Makes sense, but I *do* plan it out. Over and over and over.

do {$safe=evaluate($action);} until ($safe);
commit($action);

The loop never terminates because the $safe bit seems to be stuck low. Need to track down that const declaration.

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

"the $safe bit seems to be stuck low"

Or, to stretch the analogy some, I wonder if the problem is evaluate() rather than the ability to store the result. I sometimes have similar symptoms, because -- as near as I can determine -- my evaluate() only returns true for an action that is at least as safe as my current state.

(Actually, for me it's not so much safe as comfortable, I think. I tend to take "better the devil you know" far too seriously.)

[mdlbear]

Almost certainly right. It's probably more like:

{$previous=$plan; $plan=plan($action, $previous); $safe=evaluate($plan);}
... so I keep making plans, but they never evaluate to safe.

[ravan.livejournal.com]

Ah, then you need to look at the &evaluate() function. Instead of returning true on an absolute:
sub evaluate {
my ($act)=@_;
my $ret = 0;
$ret = 1 if ($act == 100);
return $ret;
}
return true on a reasonably high likelihood of success
sub evaluate {
my ($act)=@_;
my $ret = 0;
$ret = 1 if ($act >= 85);
return $ret;
}
Basically, you lower your perfectionism demand (I'm trying to get mine down to 75%, but...)