T I R E D

I'm Gonna Make One Less Choice.

It's possible that the one piece of useful advice my father ever gave me was related to Wordle.

At Thanksgiving he said, "you like words, why don't you play Wordle?" Admittedly as far as life wisdom goes, his was on the light side. But my father tends toward platitudes and near religious impatience with others' "issues". Noticing something about someone else and calling attention to it in a way that didn't center him was unusual.

I had resisted Wordle for a while. The public Tweeting of one’s game felt cringey. The thing that everyone is doing - even the fashion trend of the season - doesn’t interest me. I don't post first day of school or obligatory anniversary pictures. I chose the harder grad school program. I take the book over the movie and working independently instead of with a team. But for that holiday I was with Sarah, Caroline and their girls. My mood was high as my heart rate. His suggestion and the joy of precious time with both sisters caught me in rare form. I started Wordle the next day.

Wordle is both the game and the answer. Acquired in 2022, The New York Times describes Wordle as a puzzle where you attempt to guess a five letter word in six tries. With each guess, the colors of the tiles change to show you how close you are. Kind of like your own private wheel of fortune. Online chatter about Wordle says verbs are rare and the answer is usually an everyday word. But there is nothing official that I could find that promises either. Indeed, "aglow" almost broke my streak and "crone" stumped my father.

In committing to Wordle, I did the thing that dooms me, although I'm often blind to it. I said "yes" to one more thing in an already full day. My justification was this added project involved words. I’m a writer; words are my air. And yet, each morning, I had to think of a new five letter one to get going with Wordle. But I also had adjacent choices with that decisions. Too many vowels? Not enough vowels? Obscure? Had I used it before? I not only added in one more thing to my day but something that I had to consider before it even started. What was I thinking?

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My starting word is only one of hundreds of decisions I make everyday. Consider this recent restaurant scene.

Server: "Something to drink? We have sweet tea, unsweet tea, lemonade and a full bar."

Me: "I'll take a gin and tonic." (1)

"Any preference for your gin? We have Conniption, Absolut, Empress and Hendricks."

"Empress, please." (2)

Later.

"Any appetizers to start?"

"No, we can order. I'll take the pimento cheese sandwich." (3)

"With fries or salad."

"Salad." (4)

"Dressing? We have blue cheese, house, ranch or balsamic."

"Ranch." (5)

Later.

"Dessert or coffee? The warm chocolate cake is back on the menu and it's excellent."

"Ooh, we'll share that and I'll have a latte." (6)

"We only have drip coffee."

"I'll take drip." (7)

"Decaf or regular?"

"Regular." (8)

Later.

"Thank you so much. Anything else I can get you or just the check?"

"The check would be great." (9)

"One check or two?"

"One, please." (10)

Ten decisions.

“But Elizabeth," you might say. "It's just dinner!"

And yes. Except that it's also been ten hours since one of my first decisions that day: my starting Wordle word. In between I had:

• Worked on a new piece;

• Decided on questions to ask a friend about her piece;

• Called, scheduled, planned a healthcare appointment;

• Edited an older piece;

• Submitted a piece for feedback;

• Answered a dozen emails;

• Considered whether to get my flu shot separate from Covid booster;

• Emotionally supported my child, partner and two friends;

• Drafted another email asking for advice on a touchy subject;

• Did some pre-work prep for my library writing group;

• Waffled between two different workouts;

• Researched a sneaker when my newest pair malfunctioned.

As I write this, I've been interrupted no less than seven times over the course of ten minutes. A common occurrence, sure, but an interruption is also a decision. Do I respond? Can I ignore it and, if so, at what cost?

It's not only life maintenance admin that needs to be attended to on a daily basis. Even the occasions of life that I look forward to, a vacation or a class, require a great deal of input to happen. Doing another writing group, for example, may be an easy "yes" in my mind. But I also need to coordinate with the library (or consider whether that's still the right spot), weigh questions related to logistics - including the space, the time of day and how often - get the word out, plan the agenda, draft clear emails related to the group. Most everything in modern life requires a "yes" or "no" and respective follow up.

No wonder we always order the same thing when we go out to eat. We're not boring; we're exhausted.

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Remember when people started noticing President Obama wore the same suits every day? They weren’t exactly the same. Half were gray and half were blue. Obama explained his choice this way, “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. I have too many other decisions to make.”

The exhaustion from the constant choices we need to make is so real that it has a name: decision fatigue. According to The Cleveland Clinic, decision fatigue is the idea that the more decisions a person makes over the course of a day, the more physically, mentally and emotionally depleted they become. I'm only running my own life but the decision fatigue is real. It is independent of quality of sleep, age, perimenopause, weight or exercise.

I make adjustments. I avoid evening classes and meetings after 5:00 because I'm a total zombie. Present in the corporeal sense but just not able to bring much depth or attention. I have less patience and my words don't flow as much as they sputter. I also try to make fewer decisions. I have our household's toilet paper, dishwasher and laundry pods on autoship. My walking clothes are at the foot of my bed every morning. I do grocery shopping, my husband does Costco and the dog's food. I do my morning pages around the same time. Still, by the end of any given day (Mondays and Tuesdays are worse because they require heavy interaction with the public, specifically around women and their bodies), I'm wiped out.

Earlier this summer, a sentence in an article pulled my attention. In it, Judy Blume, an avid Wordle fan, said she always uses one of two starting words. Judy Blume! Always using the same word? Always, she said. As I had from day one, I'd been choosing a new starting word each morning. Hmmmm... Judy Blume: the writer who quite possibly saved me from my teenage self. I trust Judy Blume. I started thinking, "what if I did the same thing?"

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"I make em up as I go," my dad told me recently when I asked if he was still using the same word. (So, yes.) Myself, I've adopted a simpler path: choosing the same word every day. My word is one of Judy Blume's words: a delightful, textured one that I love. On a different coast, I wait for my dad to text how many attempts until he got the Wordle. Then I text back mine.

Coming up with a new five letter word every day seemed another way to delight in the expansiveness of language. And yet, it was also one more decision. If it's a Tuesday or a Thursday Dad is off to his volunteer gig for a few hours. But the biggest decision he makes on a regular basis is when to wash his car. I'm over here thinking about oral surgery for my kid, rescheduling a babysitter, finding time to make a phone call to cancel a subscription that can't be done online, and when in the day might be the best time to check in with a struggling friend...on top of the regular everyday tasks and my writing. Decision fatigue is ever present.

I'm not keeping track (I'm keeping track) but ever since I started using the same word, I usually get Wordle in fewer tries than my dad. Wordle also doesn't take me as long as it used to. I get in there, enter _ _ _ _ _ and soon thereafter, I'm done. With the same starting word, I have choices but not The One Big First One which felt make-it-or-break-it. The factor of the same starting word seems to make things a bit easier.

I'm trying to wean myself off of productivity hustle, not find another hack. And yet, in a world that runs on human labor (and is especially dependent on caring work, "the labor that makes all other work possible," something I spend a great deal of time on) being more efficient with my time is akin to good sleep: the day feels less hard. So for now, I'll take the trick that allows me to make one less choice. Especially if it means extra space in a full day for a friendly competition with my dad.

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What I’m Reading:

• Almost fifty year ago, before The Color Purple fame, before she brought Zora Neale Hurston back to us after many “lost” decades, the luminous Alice Walker wrote a brief essay in The New York Times about her father who had died a few years before. I caught mention of it as I was re-reading Gloria Steinem’s memoir, My Life On The Road a few weeks back. Read Walker’s essay here and let me know if you ever felt a similar realization about one of your parents. I’d love to know.

• “The story was very beautiful, but it was half fairy tale and Ava had a real boy to raise.” This stunning sentence is smack in the middle of The Unsettled, the brilliant new novel by Ayana Mathis. A son “is the kite” and his mother, “the string,” in a life lived shakily on the margins, before, during and after a stay at a family shelter. Any of us could be any of Mathis’ characters in this tale rife with family conflict, violence, class and race struggles and the cost of “progress”. Go read this book.

• Margo Steines’ debut book Brutalities: A Love Story. Margo teaches at University of Arizona and independently. I’ve taken two classes with Margo and she really gets the non-fiction writer (me) who has been trained to edit the self out of their work (also: me). Brutalities, a memoir of Margo’s relationship with pain and her body, doesn’t shrink from anything. It’s a naked, difficult read (note: I’m not yet finished) but one that comes with points of shattering beauty. Here’s a NYT review if you want to know more.

What’s On My Mind:

• I just finished a five week writing group at the Durham County Library with nine dynamic writers. The brilliance, thoughtfulness and beauty of these women was a joy to be adjacent to. So…I’m thinking about my next writing group! But this time for sexual abuse survivors. I’ve missed my survivor support groups! A writing group specifically for survivors feels like a way to keep that thread in my life AND keep the focus on writing. It would be in-person, no sooner than next spring, for female-identified folx. Weekday evenings, with writing time (likely), sharing papers (if desired) and also plenty of time for talk about process. Interested? Let me know privately here. Or note your choice in the poll below.

As always, thank you for being here, reading this piece, sharing it (or not), “liking” it (or not), re-Stacking it (or not!). Your presence is the best gift.