Analysis Paralysis
The title sounds a bit like a haunting nursery rhyme or bogus psychological term but bear with me. I recently had the pleasure of speaking with a family member of a mentor of mine, shoutout to the Gilbertsons, on different aspects of her life. I asked questions from "Did you always want to be a strategist" to "How do you make your thoughts make sense." From the few words I've written you can already see I'm quite the intense informational interviewer or iii if you will. Throughout the conversation I rambled as I typically do trying to articulate the images, gut feelings, and emotions that are the essence of my thoughts. From the vague image of where I’ll be in 5 years to the gut feeling I have knowing that I’ll need to create something myself that will allow me to live out all of my dreams. Hit me up if you want an interrogation style interview - I’m your guy!
In that conversation she gave me some great advise and one thing that stuck out to me was the term Analysis Paralysis. This is basically when you’re stuck at a cross roads or cross intersection finding your way. When you have these slightly more solidified ideas of “OK this is the next step” but don’t know if you’re skipping one or stopping on the wrong floor. This is the limbo I’ve been living in for… shit probably since I graduated college, the whole 2 years that’s been, but I’ll give a little more context to my idea of this limbo.
I’d wanted to be a vet my entire life. I love animals more than humans and what could probably be classified as an unhealthy amount. Driving down the street with my grandmother seeing a vet clinic and her saying “One day that'‘ll say OLIVIAS VET CLINIC in big letters” painted a beautiful image in my mind. Fast forward to Mercy College and already making a switch from vet to vet tech, the journey began. I started taking my vet 101, chem lab, chem lecture, random required freshman classes, and unhealthy amount of 10 minute naps. Then it hit me. I want to love animals but I definitely don’t want to work with them. BOOM…the painting instantly changed and a new easel sat in my lap.
In that realization I had to see what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go. So I made a cross roads for myself, it would be PA (Physicians Assistant) or PR (Public Relations). As you can tell from my many words and run on sentences, I like to talk. I went to my advisor, switched to Comm Studies with a specialization in PR, and here we are today. That was the first occurrence of Analysis Paralysis that I’d lived in and was solely a journey of my own. Since then I’ve done A & R, social media, sausage trade shows, and guerilla marketing. The paintbrush was moving but the outline is all that’d been drawn.
These last few months Covid and prior have been turbulent to say the least. I’ve been stuck thinking about the disdain I have for the typical 9-5 but passion I have for endlessly working towards something I believe in or just enjoy. What do you do with that? How do you develop an idea to embody this? The Analysis I’ve gone through has been scary but images are forming. The Paralysis I’ve felt has been endless but new colors are emerging. The painting is finally coming together and a sense of ease joint with anxiety is my current world. No matter how stuck you might feel, don’t get discouraged. This can be the moment right before your breakthrough and you just have to trust in yourself as the artist and the journey as the paintbrush in hand.