What Page Is That?

Lately I keep running into the same fork in the road, over and over again.

Is this a moment to push myself, or is this a moment to let myself relax?

If there were clear rules, I’d love that.

A checklist.

A decision tree.

A flashing sign that says, “Apply effort here” or “Stand down, this is rest.”

A cat standing in the road with a spotlight on it.

But most of the time there isn’t one. There’s just a feeling. Ambiguous. Inconvenient.

Unlabeled.

And I stall out right there.

Because I want to make the right choice. Not a choice. The right one. The optimal one.

The one that won’t come back later as evidence that I don’t understand myself.

But I’m starting to see that this demand for certainty is its own form of avoidance.

Sometimes you have to choose without knowing.

Push or rest.
Act or pause.

And accept that the information you want only arrives after the decision, not before it.

That’s uncomfortable for me.

I want foresight, not feedback. I want guarantees, not experiments. But life seems very committed to the opposite model.

So what if the decision isn’t about being right?

What if it’s about being willing to learn.

If I push and it was too much, I’ll feel it. Maybe not immediately, but soon enough.

Fatigue. Resentment. Friction.

That’s data, not failure.

And if I listen instead of doubling down, I can adjust.

If I rest and it turns into avoidance, that shows up too.

The restless guilt. The heaviness that doesn’t lift. The sense that something is being deferred rather than restored.

That’s also data.

Either way, I get information.

But only if I’m paying attention and only if I’m willing to respond with grace instead of judgment.

I think that’s the missing piece for me.

Trusting that I’ll handle it if I get it wrong.

Trusting that future me won’t punish present me for an imperfect call made in good faith.

Grace, here, isn’t softness for its own sake.

It’s what makes experimentation possible. Without it, every decision feels like a test I could fail permanently. With it, decisions become temporary.

Revisable.

Human.

So now, when I’m standing in that foggy space between effort and rest, I’m trying a different question.

Not “Which one is correct?”
But “Which one can I learn from right now?”

Sometimes the answer is to push gently.

Sometimes it’s to stop early on purpose.

And sometimes it’s to pick one, set a small boundary around it, and check in afterward instead of spiraling beforehand.

I don’t need to always know the right move.

I need to trust that I’ll notice the results, care about myself enough to respond, and adjust without turning it into a referendum on my character.

Push or rest.
Try or pause.

Either way, I’m allowed to be kind to myself in the not knowing.

And that, I’m realizing, makes the choice a lot less terrifying.