Melancholy...

That's actually a really pretty word.

Melancholy.

It just sounds better than bummed.

We should go back to calling it melancholy.

I have a touch of melancholy right now. It's been slipping in around the edges for the past few days and really settled in overnight.

I know what caused it to settle and it's one of those super frustrating things.

It's a decision I made a few years ago that the repercussions of suck. And the worst part for me is that if I had made the opposite decision I would still have the same repercussions. I was not expecting it to be the same no matter what I chose, obviously, but sometimes that's the way it goes. There is no good choice. So you make the best choice you can.

Decisions and outcomes are handled by two different departments.

Brent and I have talked about decisions and decision making a few times (as you can imagine) recently and we both agree that he and I are pretty good at weighing out our options and making the best choice for right then. And then realizing that we aren't in control of anything past that point.

And that's the bitch of decision making. You can weigh all of your options, come up with a great plan and then...not get the results you wanted. Because, again, decisions and outcomes are handled by two different departments.

For me what I keep telling myself today as I sit with my melancholy is that I would not have made a different choice even if I had known what would happen. I made the choice that was right for me to make. The one that felt like the best moral choice. The one that helps me sleep at night. The other one would not have. So I made the best choice I could with the information I had, and even if I had the rest of the information I still would have made the same choice. So today I wallow in melancholy. And tomorrow I move on.

Outcomes are not guaranteed in life.

And that really kind of sucks sometimes.