SHOPPED & DROPPED
By Rick Green
Riding in a Disney bus to the Disney resort for the huge CHADD conference. Tomorrow morning Patrick McKenna, Dr. Jain and I are doing two different workshops. Lots of fun planned.
Despite the video playing on the bus, explaining how to book in, use your Disney credit card, etc.., I’m still catching snippets of conversations around me.
(By the way, they say there are computers that comb through the internet searching for key words that might indicate terrorists are planning something. They should forget the computers and just hire a bunch of ADHD/ADD adults.)
Anyway, at one point two girls said, “We’ll shop till we drop.”
As in shop until you are so exhausted and spent and frazzled you can’t go on any more and you need to do something else, anything else.
Usually, I hit that wall after about 4 minutes in a mall. I hate shopping. Too many choices. It’s like menus. I am always first to order. I open the menu, I scan down until I see something that I wouldn’t mind having, and I close my menu and order it. Or, I go to my fallback position and just say, “Do you have Club Sandwiches? I’ll have one of those please.”
We’re checked into the hotel, and there’s a shirt that is checked, literally. It’s got a checked pattern. I bought it when we went clothes shopping for a trip to Paris earlier this year. And even though the sleeves are about 2 inches too long, it looked okay, it was comfy, and I had already been shopping for almost 30 minutes and was crawling out of my skin. I have to admit, this happens less and less, partly because I am just calmer. I’ve worked on it. Relaxation. Brief meditation. Naps while driving… (I’m the passenger.)
The other reason this ‘bugginess’ rarely has me in it’s thrall is that I’ve learned to recognize it. The moment I do, it falls away. I have access to another way of being. I can recognize what’s going on, take a deep breath and remind myself there’s no rush, enjoy this, there’s no where to get to. Nowhere I have to be.
I’d say more, but I just realized I have to go finish the Videos for tomorrow! Yikes!
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I tend to overwhelm easily, especially in big-box stores. There are too many items, each having too many choices of brand, size, etc…the list is endless. I go into instant brain-freeze, forget what it is I’m there for or, if I have a list, I begin striking items off as not being worth the hassle.
I can walk into a certain big-box home improvement store with a list of items sure to make for a fun-filled weekend only to find myself brain locked and exhausted 15 minutes later. Too many aisles, too much merchandise, too many choices, and…too many people.
I suffer from claustrophobia, especially so in crowds (flying is a panic-fueled nightmare), and I will leave the store in a cold sweat -sans anything on my list- before going down a crowded aisle. This is especially so if I’m already feeling over-stimulated, over-confused, over-frustrated at my inability to do what I went there for.
My solution? While I work very close to the big box mentioned above, I live in a small community 30 miles away. I’ve started doing a lot more shopping at my local lumberyard and hardware store. They usually have everything I need without making me wade through 32 different types/styles/brands/etc. The store is big enough to hold what it needs, the aisles are narrower than Home-De…err, the big box mentioned above, but they never seem crowded. And, if I do need some help deciding what it is I’m needing or how to do a certain thing, the staff are knowledgeable and -bonus points here- know me by name.
What’s not to love?
When I get into that state that is best described by the medical term, “I’m-going-buggy-and-getting-real-agitated-and-need-to-be-somewhere-else-don’t-ask-me-why-I-just-want-to-go”, I’ve learned to take a deep breath, then another, and force myself to ask, “Can you stand this for five more minutes? Is it all that bad? What is it you think you should be doing? What is so bad about this? Is this real urgency or just overwhelm? What would make this fun? What is one thing I can focus on and and relax? What would make this enjoyable? What if I just stop honouring the ‘internal whir’ and pause and look around and simply be calm?…”
I am not a fan of shopping either. I tend to hunt, rather than shop. That is, I figure out what I need and run in like a SEAL Team extracting a hostile target. Of course, picking the target is always the hard part. I’ve been hemming and hawing over upgrading my PC for 3 months now.
If you want to make a fortune, invent a program that works like Web MD, but for gadgets: “Point to the part of your life that needs organizing…”
I hate shopping, too. Too much stuff, too many lights, too many choices, too much ambient noise, not enough fresh air or daylight. Plus, I can’t pick out anything that looks good on me, and would usually come home with a whole bunch of ugly, dumpy stuff, until I gave up and started asking my husband to help me make myself presentable. Too many years of “how come your mother dresses you funny?”….Crowds make me feel overwhelmed, bombarded, tired. Too much information. Every restaurant I go to where I’m a regular because I don’t want to think about where to go, I order the same thing every time.
I can relate on overwhelming choices especially in restaurants. About two years ago I gave up. I don’t even look at most fast food menu’s anymore. I just ask for what I want and let them figure out which combo meal that is. At a hash house I’ll ask for what I want and leave generous tip at the end. They figure that out real quick and the next time I’ll get asked if I just want the usual.
I can relate – just came home with all new pants – unfortunately they were all too short. Pulled all tags and ran thru washer/dryer before realizing the mistake. But hey – it’s almost winter – maybe there will be a flood! Haha!
Seriously though – I left the store the other day with my husband empty-handed. I just couldn’t take any more of it. My husband was so concerned. He was like: Are you OK? That’s so weird – you spent all that time, and didn’t get anything… I explained: I couldn’t think anymore – better to come back when I’m doing better than walk away with the wrong stuff and my hard earned money gone…