A Bad Decision

Ugh. Today I made a bad decision and I’d like to share it because…I don’t even know…to show that I think about these sorts of things and can acknowledge my mistakes. Hopefully it’ll help me make a better decision next time…

Setting

Every Tuesday I tend to take our eldest to Taekwondo and I generally have a choice. I can either sit in a cramped little room with a grainy screen and watch/listen to my son doing martial arts, or I can occupy myself in other ways for the 45 minutes.

Last week was assessment week, and I wasn’t allowed into the building. With my hand forced, I drove to Wetherspoons and had an enjoyable half pint.

Today was a tough (but good) day - we spent a very long and hot day at a farm park and I was tired.

The Decision

As I took my son to Taekwondo I had to decide whether to stay and watch or whether to go to Wetherspoons and have some food. I dropped him off and, as soon as he was through the door, I drove off to the Wetherspoons.

Not a Burger

45 minutes isn’t long, and so you have to decide quickly. I was going to pick a Gourmet burger, but I’m trying to lose weight at the moment and those things are 1600 calories. I’ve got form with crumbling under the weight of food-based decisions. As an impoverished University student I once got so hungry/angry about not having money that I vowed to go to the shop and buy whatever I wanted for dinner. After around 20 minutes walking listlessly round the shop I came back with a £1.50 prawn curry. Knowing my own weakness here and sensing a spiral, I panic ordered a jacket potato - not bad, but not really the wonderful treat I was hoping for.

The True Cost

After my kind-of-fine jacket potato, I drove back and caught the last 10 minutes of the lesson. The class was full: three classes worth of kids in one room, and a chance for my son to learn from some of the older kids. Everything seemed OK until my son came out:

“Daddy, you didn’t get a photo of me in my pose when I got my belt”

It turns out, there’d been a presentation of his newest belt and a photo opportunity…and I wasn’t there.

He wasn’t bothered and didn’t make a big deal of it. But all the same, I feel like I should have been there and I wasn’t. And to make matters worse…what did I even have to show for it? A perfectly fine jacket potato.

Not worth it. Very not worth it.

Conclusion

I didn’t know I was missing an event and it’s hard to beat myself up about it too much from a logical perspective. But it’s hard to not beat myself up about it emotionally. I like being there for my children and here’s a case where I wasn’t. A case where I could have been with very little effort on my part…and still, I wasn’t.