Having a million options is something that sounds good on paper, but can cause nightmares in practice. You’ve probably been there. You’re scrolling through Netflix or YouTube with a snack in a bowl, finding the perfect show or movie to watch while eating. By the time you choose something that you might watch, your food is either cold or it’s almost finished. You just spent more time trying to find something to watch rather than watching it.

Your childhood experience with having too much to choose from is probably the toy store. You might not have figured out what exactly you were interested in yet. Without that many options that you can try, you automatically just gravitate toward toys that look good. You beg your parents to buy you more but they can’t allow you to. This leads you with having to choose one toy. You’re there for a bit before your parents beg you to just go or choose one.

Another childhood experience you might have gone through is picking colours for that drawing you made. You want all 96 colours in that big box of crayons on your drawing but you can only pick a few that work. Unless you had a good understanding of colour theory or you had a general idea of what you were drawing, you had no idea what colour to choose.

(Phil Roeder / Flickr)

One of your first experiences with having to choose something serious was fonts in Microsoft Word. Before you had to write something that was in Times New Roman, you were choosing between Comic Sans (which you should never pick by the way) and Impact. In the end, you probably regret the font you chose for that assignment that you had to type.

Your biggest trap as an adult is clothing stores. You’re in that shirt section, trying to find something that looks cool. You see around 10 options that you would really like to wear, but can only afford one, maybe two. You try out every single shirt in the dressing room, some of them don’t look as good as you thought they did but rather than just eliminating them, you try to convince yourself that you’ll have a use for them. When you finally decide to buy a shirt and wear it, you instantly regret it but you can’t return it now.

One of my biggest death traps is music and video game stores. Music stores are easily my biggest nightmare because of how much I already want to own. I was at Everyday Music in Portland, Oregon last weekend, hoping to find what I want quickly. It took me well over 40 minutes to decide on two vinyl records and two CDs that I know I enjoy. I already regret capping it at those four because I could’ve bought one more vinyl that I know I’m not going to find in the future, which was a copy of Gone Forever by God Forbid. Every time I go through a music store these days, I usually come out with only one option or empty-handed because I can’t always justify my purchases.

(David Seibold / Flickr)

We also went to Powell’s Books in Portland. If you’ve never been there, think of it as a wonderland for books. It’s a lot bigger than my local public library which can make it hard to find books. My sister was the one that wanted to go there the most but she ended up coming out empty-handed because she said to herself, “I can just get these for free at the library,” which is true. Unlike the library where you don’t need to commit, buying a book is something you need to commit to. At least with library books, you’re more committed to reading the book because you have a limited amount of time to read it, whereas owning a book means you can just finish it at any time, which doesn’t give anyone a good incentive to read the book as soon as possible. We were in that store for a solid 30 minutes before leaving after she decided that she didn’t want to buy anything.

https://flic.kr/p/6ybZ73

(Kari Sullivan / Flickr)

Video game stores are also a huge death trap. I like buying games but sometimes I need to know if I really want to play them. The last time I ever bought a game was back in 2020 but that was only because I needed something to hold me over during the start of the pandemic. Other than that, I’ve never been able to choose a game. I almost bought one for my birthday last month but ended up not buying it because I wasn’t sure if it was going to be the right choice. Considering my energy levels these days, I can’t justify buying a game I know I won’t play as much as I want to.

Restaurants are everyone’s biggest problem when it comes to choosing dishes. Sometimes you can’t even choose a restaurant. There are a lot of places you like but always have a reason to not pick them. Either it’s because it’s too expensive, you’ve had similar food recently, or it’s just a place that you can’t justify buying from. When you finally get there, you either already know what you want or you’re sitting there for a while not knowing what you want. Food is something that’s mostly final sale so whatever you pick is something you’ll have to stick to. Since you know you can’t finish that much food, you know you can’t order a lot. People will be fighting over what you order, or they can’t decide at all. I’ve been at a few restaurants where I couldn’t decide what to eat to the point where I needed help from my family just to pick something I know will enjoy, which is weird because I should be the one who knows what I want.

(Geoff Peters / Flickr)

Having to choose between things at stores, restaurants, or even online will always be a nightmare. You either have too much to choose from that you can always go back to later, or there’s too much and you can only pick one. Regardless, you’ll either be happy in the end or regret it.