Choices vs. lack thereof

This week I am on a whistle stop tour of the US to visit friends and family and to stock up on all the consumer goods I miss from the States. I spend most of my time visiting and eating and shopping - literally gorging myself on company and consumables until I can’t see straight.

I love a good shop, me. But since I have been living away from the US, every time I return for a supermarket sweep, I am left with a sense of emptiness. To be more precise, my suitcases are full and my wallet less so, but there has been a strange shift for me when revisiting the United States of Shopping. I feel like there is too. much. choice.

Don’t get me wrong – I like to sort through 22 fits and 17 colors of a pair of jeans at the mall. At least I used to. Now, though, the thought of shopping fills me with a sense of anxiety and dread. When I go to Houston, I usually only stay three or four days before moving on to somewhere else. Because I know where the shops are in H-town, I do a mad circular dash from the Galleria to Target to the outlet malls to Central Market, frantically shoving things into shopping bags until I want to slit my wrists with a credit card. There’s too many colors, sizes, fits, washes, fabrics. Just too much everything. Ten years ago this cornucopia of ‘too much’ would’ve been music to my ears. Today it is just sensory overload. How did this happen?

According to psychology professor Barry Schwartz in his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, choice and satisfaction are inversely related. The more choice you have, the less satisfied you are. This seemed counter-intuitive to me, but after some reflection, I think I get what Schwartz is on about.

Let’s say on my bi-annual Target run I am stocking up on dryer sheets (Seriously, I do. They’re cheap and easy to pack and good for a multitude of things). If I have 20 choices of dryer sheets (There really are that many.. at least!), I have 20 opportunities to feel I picked the lesser option. I can have mountain fresh scent OR I can have easy iron. But I can’t have both. Now I WANT both, so I am dissatisfied with each individual option. This cycle repeats until I have exhausted the 18 other options and am left, broken and teary in the aisle of Target, wishing I hadn’t selected the onerous task of choosing dryer sheets.

In Norway it’s a different story. I go to one of the only two stores that even sell dyer sheets, I walk to the aisle where the dryer sheets live, and I pluck a box and put it in my basket. Done and dusted with no drama or gnashing of teeth. I don’t know what super fancy options my dryer sheets possess, but it doesn’t matter as it’s the only option I have. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that I wouldn’t like a little MORE choice in Norway sometimes, but the lack thereof makes my life a hell of a lot simpler. It leaves me space to focus on the choices that do matter and less on the ones that just don’t.

I’m certain this seems melodramatic, but for anyone who's ever lived for an extended time away from home, you might be able to relate to what I'm talking about. Most expatriates complain about the lack of choice in Norway – they do this in the same tone of voice as discussing a dirty hotel room or a less than gracious dinner guest. But I think this lack of choice is something that should be embraced (mainly because, let’s face it, there’s sod all you can do about it).

If I don’t have 6,000 choices of where to go to dinner (fact check it – that’s how many eating holes there are in Houston!), then I worry less about picking a place and instead focus on enjoying the company I keep while I gnosh away. If I don’t have 1,428 choices for body lotion (the number of options you find on drugstore.com), then I choose one of the 10 options I do have, slather myself up, and get on with life.

None of this is to say I am overly enlightened. I still like to have a good moan about all the things I can’t buy in Norway as well as the lack of options when I do have to make a purchase. But it does mean that, after living in Europe for almost a decade, I realize there is not one single consumer good I can’t live without.

That all being said, I will still participate in the twice-a-year shopfest when I go to the US. But on a day-to-day basis back home in Norway, I will secretly relish that I can reserve my decision-making skills for more substantiative things. Like when to go back to Houston for more shopping.

Technophile vs. Technophobe

I can remember the day clearly. It was December of 1995, the end of my first semester of college. I had saved my pennies from my minimum wage gig and raced to the Compaq Outlet. I laid down my cash for the fanciest PC I could afford (which , in retrospect, probably had less memory than my mobile phone does now), carted it home, and plugged it in. Within minutes (really it was more like hours, but I am remembering myself as more skilled than I likely was), I had the free AOL CD installed, and I had registered for a screen name. It was so early in the AOL game that my name consisted only of four letters ('jeel', for the sake of trivia). After a little roaring and spluttering, the modem connected and I was on the net for the first time I can actually recall. I felt like a WIZARD! From that moment until about six or seven years ago, I was a technophile. I felt I had a good grasp on what was happening in the world of computers.

Now I am like a slightly outdated older aunt when it comes to technology. It's funny to hear her talk about the good ol' days at the family reunion, but you pity her a little bit for living in the past. I have become a technophobe.

I marvel at my students and friends and their lofty-sounding discussions of tweeting and blogging and linking up the micronet IP to the submask of jumping jehosaphat (at least that's what I think they're saying). So I decided I was no longer going to sit on the information highway and watch the megabytes whiz by. My new project was to get technophiled again.

So far the results are mixed.

After much goading, I created a Facebook account. I was pretty convinced that FB was only for twelve year old girls and that anyone over this age was just a saddo. I'm not sure my opinion has necessarily changed after a year of use, but the good news is that all the saddos I want to keep up with are on there as well. I find great delight in connecting with my past (and my present) via photos, messages and status updates. For expatriates in particular, having a link to your former existence is comforting as no one is ever more than a 'post comment' away.
Facebook: 8/10

I bought an iPhone and downloaded every application that looked even remotely interesting. I use approximately three of the 72 apps I downloaded (and how I wish that was an exaggerated figure - those 99 cents add up after a while). I do find great joy in Flight Control, which I only recommend if you have plenty of free time and a masochistic need to play 'just one more game, honestly!'. So far the iPhone is used for texts and peeking at Facebook and the odd phone call. I suspect the iPhone could actually tie my shoes and take out the trash, but it just seems like a big investment to learn much more about it.
iPhone: 7/10

I joined Twitter and even installed Tweetie on my iPhone. While I find blogging slightly self-indulgent, I find Twitter downright obnoxious. I guess I wasn't born with the innate need to update the world on my 140-character exploits at every moment of the day. Nor do I really want to read anyone else's. I think Twitter is causing us to miss out on the experience because we're too busy trying to (t)whittle it down to witty text bytes. However, I persevere as I think this is a game-changing technology. Those in oppression and under restriction can use Twitter to speak to the outside world. I want to like Twitter as I see social benefit, but so far I can't quite get my head round it enough to be completely sold.
Twitter: 4/10

And now here I am with Blog. Blog and I have gotten off to a shaky start. I have something to say, and Blog lets me. But Blog is like a needy new boyfriend - he wants more than I am ready to give at this stage in our relationship. He wants me to install meta-tags and enable tracking statistics and format html. These are all things I have no knowledge of and little desire to perform. I feel like the Grumpy Old Man from the Dana Carvey SNL skit: "I'm old and I'm not happy. Everything today is improved and I don't like it. Back in my day, there was no 'comment moderation'. There was no 'edit post'. There was no 'insert link.'. That's the way it was and we LIKED it!" Ignorance is certainly blissful, but I don't want to get left behind, so I will continue poring over the help pages like they are a trashy romance novel.
Blog: TBD/10

I am sure the fact that these four tools are my idea of opening my techno-mind will give a giggle to some of the more progressives out there. But it's a start, and you've got to get in the game to play it. So I'm here, error messages and all.

Texans vs. everybody else

I'm from Texas.

I usually tell people I'm from Houston because that's a lot easier than explaining that I moved around a lot as a kid - from deep west Texas to the Hill Country to just north of Houston, then finally to Houston when I was 17. 'Just north of Houston' is now really just one stucco shopping center from downtown H-town, and both places share the unfortunate characteristic of I-45 unceremoniously shooting through the middle, but JNOH was a different world when I left there almost 15 years ago. It was a place where we rode horses after school, religiously watched high school football every Friday night, and wore boots and jeans as normal daytime attire (and not in an ironic way!).

It would surprise people that know the current version of me that I still have my kangaroo leather boots tucked away somewhere as it seemed sacrilegious to throw them out despite the fact I am unlikely to ever wear them again. I spent summers tubing down the Frio and Guadalupe, snapped photos in bluebonnet fields, knew all the words to 'Texas, Our Texas' (Knew? Ha - STILL know!), and thought I would marry a lawyer (or some other equally gray-area professional) from a small town but a big ranch who wore his Stetson to the office.* I was a card-carrying member of the Young Conservatives of Texas, went fishing on the weekends, and felt a trip to South Padre was the be-all-end-all of spring break nirvana. Man, I WAS Texas.

But now...

Now, I live in Norway. And this after spending a good deal of my 20's living first in Scotland. Now, in some ways I am less Texan than I have ever been. But I still want to be. Now I worry that my kids (the ones I don't even have yet) will never know the kind of childhood and experiences that I was raised on. I lament that they will never have a high school letterman jacket, or will go to prom, or will learn to two-step. They *could* do all those things to some extent living in Europe. But they would be contrived and not organic experiences. They would be the exception and not the norm.

When I visit Texas now (which I try and do two or three times a year), I'm a them. I recognize the surface, but I just can't seem to do anything more than poke at what's underneath. I can't identify with the politics, understand the pace of life, or bear the painfully extreme weather (by extreme I mean either really hot or really rainy - there doesn't seem to be an in-between). It's like visiting a place I've never known but read about once in a book.

When people in Europe ask me where I'm from, I proudly tell them 'Texas'. Oddly, I never say American - always just Texan. But more often than not I am met with the response of 'Oh. You don't sound like you're from Texas!' So to the them's, I don't fit the picture of what someone from Texas is supposed to be like. This causes an almost resentment on my part. I am an US, dammit! But because I don't draaaawl my vowels and say y'all and howdy, I've lost that covetable status.

I know why it happened, and it was my choice. When I moved to Scotland in my early 20's, my accent was a source of feeling different. While some Scots poked a little fun at it, it was never in a malicious way, but in a way that made you feel like a them. As a new university lecturer and first time expatriate, it was hard to bear any extra ridicule, so I adapted. George Bush had just been elected, and, at least in Europe, sounding like Dubya wasn't getting you very far in life. So I flattened the accent and threw out the colloquialisms. I left one us behind for another. Now that I've been lecturing almost a decade, I kind of wish I hadn't. I wish I would've had more guts to be true to my us's.

Living in another country sometimes makes you think harder about what you aren't than what you are. Here in Norway, I am *not* Norwegian. But, somehow, in my not-Norwegian-ness, I forgot how to be what I am - or, at least, what I used to be. Now it's just a label for me - a way to geographically describe my roots. In terms of Texas, I'm an us and a them all at the same time. Just depends on who's askin', y'all.
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* This news greatly disturbed Husband, who is painfully English and wasn't even certain what a Stetson was. I told him this as we were watching 'No Country for Old Men' and Woody Harrelson's character appeared on screen. If you've seen the film, you know he is not the most savory of sorts, so I think it worried Husband that this was my teenage impression of my future beau.

What started it all

I spend a lot of time thinking on and talking about and lamenting over all the 'us and them' issues in life. Sometimes I'm an us and sometimes a them, depending on my mood, the situation, or someone else's definition. I spend much of my professional life trying to convince people that the space between U&T is not that great. I spend much of my personal life realizing that sometimes, it is.

Many dichotomies exist for me. That of teacher/student, friend/foe, foreign/native. I realized when I was giving a lecture a few weeks ago that sometimes I don't know or can't remember where I fall on a certain U&T scale. Addressing a group of Norwegians (and one lone Chinese man, bless!), I was explaining what local Norwegian businesses could do in order to help foreigners feel more integrated in the workplace. I said, "We have to help them understand that living in Norway can be a great opportunity!" This was worrisome on several levels: first, because it was a bit of a tall order; second, because it is not necessarily true; and third, because I had somehow subconsciously stopped being a them (a foreigner) and had suddenly become an us.

Thing is, I am foreign. I relish my non-Norwegian-ness, in fact. Not in a 'Norwegians bite' kind of way, but in a 'don't forget where you come from, Tex' sort of way. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I began having a conversation with myself (while still managing to continue my conversation with the class... mostly).

Here's what I wondered: Does a person's concept of U&T change over time? Is it okay to not be sure which one you are? How do you deal with feeling like an us when the rest of the us's see you as a them?

I don't have any real answers for those questions, but I have a lot more questions where those came from, so I plan to put them all down right here in this little blog.