Giorgia

indecision

I picture myself as very decisive person, especially on big-life choices; but there are a lot of little little decisions that have to be made every day that fill my mind over and over, and I would ask my inner self “shall I?” continuously during my days.

Shall I enter this Deli and buy a seltzer or just wait the next one? Shall I ask the waitress to turn the AC down or is it unpolite? Shall I order this

or that?

I believe everyone experiences these tiny regular conflicts in their head, but - as always - counting and noting them down makes us realize how many they are!

On Monday I started and wrote down every little undecided inner thoughts I encountered “Should I close this window? Should I write is this way or the other way?…."

The more the week evolved I decided to set a filter level: I would record only the real indecisions, the ones that made me uncomfortable, and not the millions of inner questions I stumbled upon every minute.

A very particular week.

Despite my idea of myself as a decisive human being, turned out this week I wasn’t so determined.

This week my grandfather passed away, he has been ill for a long time. I saw him the last time in February during a very quick visit to my family in Italy; and this week as his conditions went down hill, I seriously took into account to buy a last minute flight to say him a last goodbye.

But I didn’t, for multiple reasons.

During these days I felt so poor, miserable, useless and selfish that I really wish I decided to go.

It was very painful, I will never see him again, I could have seen him once more; and - most of all - he could have seen me once more.

So, I felt incredibly undecided whether to go or not before he passed away, and immensely ambivalent on how to feel after that, later in the week.

How do I feel about my family? About living so far away and knowing that I can’t be always there for emergencies?

How do I feel about my loss, about the fact that I won’t see him again, can I really be relieved he’s not suffering anymore or am I just selfishly sad about how much I will miss him?

I found this week being the most intrusive, since when we started Dear Data, I was dealing with my life hesitancies and I had to focus on them very badly since I needed to record them.

I was really overwhelmed, but at the same time now I see my postcard as a sort of homage to his memory, and to my particular struggle in dealing with our distance and our missed goodbye.

I also talked to Stefanie about my situation during a call, and we shared the inner conflicts of being expats regarding these moments, I think we felt close.



My drawing

I drew my indecisions dividing them according to whether I came to term with them or not: did I solve it immediately? Did I postpone the decision? Was I still undecided at the end of the week?

Of course I differentiated my elements for their importance: what was the level of anxiety that the un-decisiveness triggered me? And I represented it through their size.

I assigned colors to the main reasons for being undecided and I added a visual “tale” to illustrate how long did it take to “decide”, if I decided.

So far, this is the postcard of mine I remember the most, it is the one that stands out in my mind when I think of my data-drawings, it is the one that I attach more memories to.

Scribbles!

I love Stefanie’s card, it’s very beautiful, and the way she represented her hesitations really give me the idea of “indecision”.

I love that she also added a symbol to indicate if she regretted her decisions later, it is very smart and adds a further level of thoughts to this pretty intense topic.

Our data as our source of memories

As I wrote already, Dear Data is not only an art project, a self investigative project, and a friendship project; it is also a diary, a source of very precise memories.

Every postcard is a homage to a moment (a week) of our lives we probably wouldn’t have given so much importance to, especially if nothing very relevant would happen.

I am very grateful to this project for getting me more attentive to the time that passes.