The Decider

She is the Decider, the maker of decisions. She is good at it, skilled and consistent. Malcolm Gladwell says you become an expert at something once you’ve done it for 10 years or 10,000 hours. She’s been The Decider far longer than that. Within that space lies her Cosmic Protest. There are days, situations, circumstances in which she abhors being The Decider, refuses to make the decision, resists even when The Borg declares her resistance futile. She protests, stonewalls and refuses making the decision. The consequence is a dinner of squeeze cheese and crackers or ice cream and French fries. The outcome of her refusal to decide is an argument with her children or an exasperated staff. Her Cosmic Protest can be a terrible game of  emotional Chicken, where she runs off the road at the last minute – deciding in that last split second anyways. Her world relies, depends, assumes she will be The Decider. Because she is skilled and effective, does it mandate that she must remain The Decider. To relinquish her position, must she pull an Agassi, a Tiger, a Brittany Spears – the glorified scandal and meltdown? Or can she plop herself on her bottom like a three year old and throw a tantrum? No, this luxury of abdication is for Kings and Divas. She is The Decider and a small world depends upon her to stop being a petulant cry baby.

She gets back on the horse but within every day, she relishes her small, albeit private Cosmic Protest to NOT DECIDE something. It is her small procrastination, her chore left undone, her errand not completed, her cluttered desk. Her “not now” reply when asked to decide something. Later, she says. I’ll decide THAT later.

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I decided over the weekend to start my next quilt. I have been in a bit of a slump creatively, the vacuum of building the house drained my reserves. I lost my voice for writing two years ago and turned to quilting to jump start my creativity, hoping it would collaterally trigger the voice to return. The mutism remained steadfast and then the quilt block settled in. I now know it was to make room for the house building, the true impetus for my creative drive. Now I have a home, THE HOME, and the systems are slowly coming back online. This is my next quilt. It’s for The Hub, the TV/game room in the house.