Analysis Paralysis.

Hands up if you're a 'thinker'.

I think I am. I think I think too much. What do you think?

I believe thinking is truly a wonderful thing... I'm all for it. Like our own mini 'time out', it keeps ourselves in check, prevents us from going off the rails, and enables us to make decisions. Thinking is all good. Except when it becomes paralysing and counterintuitive.

The opposite of over-thinking is surely being 'comfortably numb'... when the analysis paralysis jets off to the Maldives for a cocktail and a well-earned rest, and the mind is left behind with the sweet quiet life... accepting it. Embracing it. Not worrying about it. Just living. No questions asked.

And then, on other days, analysis paralysis steps back off the plane with a tan and fresh energy. And it's on days like these that I wake up suddenly wondering where I am, who I am, what I'm doing, and whether I'm where I'm supposed to be. Wherever that is. And the older one gets, the more possessions one accumulates, the more attachments one makes, the colder the sweat. This has nothing to do with my life right now; analysis paralysis has been showing up on my doorstep for thirty years asking me, 'Is everything alright?' And whether it is or it isn't doesn't matter: the question is now planted.

Living abroad, away from home, is dangerously fertile ground for analysis paralysis. In fact, it can be wickedly deceitful... one day you can float through life to a soundtrack of 'tra la la', living in some kind of perpetual holiday fantasy in this 'new world'; and on other days you can wake up wondering where the hell you are and if you even recognise your own life. Because so much has changed so fast.

Out of the blue, I have missed home this weekend. I have missed my 'old life'. I have struggled to recognise my new life, which made so much sense just a few days ago. And I'd like to send analysis paralysis on an all-expenses-paid trip back to the Maldives.

What about you? Do you ever 'over-think' it all?

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