Like Working With Sandpaper II

Something I’m thankful for

What if it’s overrun with roaches and cobwebs? What if it’s a scam and they’re charging way more than I should pay? What if I arrive with my bags only to find that the hostel has been closed for 40 years?

These questions played through my mind a month before I left home while I agonized over booking my first hostel. There were so many options, and I had never booked a room before. I feared I might pick wrong.

Eventually it reached a point where if I waited any longer, there might not have been any hostels left. I selected one of my options and clicked “RESERVE.” Pressing that button was, at the time, one of the scariest things I had ever done.

A month later, when I landed, I liked the hostel a lot. It had a great social atmosphere, the beds were comfortable, and the place was centrally located. It was the perfect home base for my two weeks in Edinburgh. I had made, one might say, the “right” choice.

Still, that success didn’t make it any easier to book the second hostel. Or the third. Or even the fourth.

---

Cut to a few days ago. With a fast Internet connection, a flight to London in a week and a half, and plans to spend Christmas with family in Ireland, I took a few hours, and just sort of… booked all of my remaining hostels. From now until the end of my trip (this part of it, anyway).

This slew of choices tortured me surprisingly little. Of course, I had my worries, like when I realized I couldn’t find a hostel in London for the full duration of my intended stay. But instead of wailing and gnashing my teeth, I thought, “What if I take a mini trip to Bath?” and inserted that in the middle of my stay so I could book a different London hostel on either side of it.

This kind of quick decision-making would have been inconceivable to me at the start of this trip. I’d have agonized over each of these choices until I had only days left to book, by which point my choices would have been reduced and inferior.

Of course, I haven’t stayed at any of these hostels yet. It’s possible that I’ll hate all of them! But like I wrote in a previous post¹, on this trip, I’ve been learning that the “right” choice doesn’t exist. Rather, it’s that I make a choice, and then I can make that choice the right one.

I’ve felt the effects of this development bleed into other areas, too. This week, I rented a car for the first time. I was, frankly, terrified. I was certain I would be scammed by an overcharging company, or that I would violate some obscure rule of the road, or that any number of bad things might happen.

And yet, I did it. I booked the car.

That probably wouldn’t have happened four months ago.

I am still working with sandpaper, smoothing out my difficulties, one pass at a time.

If you’ll excuse the metaphor, I’m thankful that I’m starting to feel some of that smoothness.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

1. Like Working With Sandpaper. (Still not any less weird to footnote myself!)