Breaking character

As a general rule, I almost never buy things on impulse. If I see something and want it, I make myself wait, remembering that I can always come back and get it later if I still want it. Most of the time, I don’t end up wanting it later (or I just forget about it). It’s a good rule to follow, because it helps me avoid wastefully buying junk I don’t really need.

I tend to be a fairly conscientious person about some things, but sometimes it’s to a fault. Rather than being merely thoughtful, I can end up wasting a lot of time worrying about what I should or shouldn’t do. Occasionally this is exhausting and makes me wish I could loosen up a bit.

Today I was grocery shopping and they happened to have some Pokémon plushies at the store. On top of the impulse-buying rule, I also have a heuristic against buying branded merchandise (why give a company free advertising?). On the other hand, the plushies took me back to when I was a kid playing the original Pokémon games. I thought of how much I used to like Pikachu, and how I used to have some other little Pikachu-themed toy I can’t recall anymore.

So I decided I could go against my rule today. I’ve been looking for something fun to have on my desk at work anyways. I put him in the front seat of my car with me as I finished my errands, and he put a smile on my face every time I looked over.

Beyond just the simple fun of it, it felt good to do something that felt a little dumb to me. I have a normal script for myself as a careful person who considers his actions, but breaking with that script in a harmless way made me feel a little more free and a little less locked into the pattern of worry I found myself in.

Have you “broken character” recently? What is a script you tend to follow that you wish you could disrupt? Let me know your thoughts at my Ctrl-C email: gome ​@ ​ctrl-c.club.