After the appointment, I crossed out the place I was going to move to.
After leaving the exam room, Seoyun deleted the address of the place she wanted to go first. But it wasn’t just an address she deleted.
After leaving the appointment, Seoyun erased her plan to move to a new city and began telling people around her as if the decision were already final.
Seoyun has an appointment just before a long-prepared job change and move. After leaving the exam room, she faces a consent form from a colleague and a call from Mother, one after the other, and sees how she is putting away something she hasn’t decided yet. Haewol places the two paths on one map and pauses the story by asking what Seoyun is erasing first.
When you erase one side before deciding
Before a big decision, look first at what you’re already getting rid of, rather than what you’ll choose. It can help you see what remains to be considered.
What option did you erase first recently, even though you hadn’t decided yet?
The scene of Seoyun leaving the exam room and deleting the address of the city she was going to move to stays with me. What I noticed then was not that she chose one path, but that she was leaving herself—the self who had just checked on her health—out of the decision first. If you’re carrying a moment when you stopped in a similar way, you’re welcome to tell me what you were looking at before you erased it.
Scenes
- 01 · After the appointment After the appointment — After the appointment, Seoyun turned on her phone to check on the move she had been preparing for so long. At the very top of the screen was a consent-form notification from the publishing company’s HR team.
- 02 · The deleted address The deleted address — Seoyun deleted the new workplace address from the consent form and sent a short reply to the publishing company’s HR team. She hadn’t even decided yet, but the words made her sound like someone who had already given up. Seoyun: I won’t be taking this assignment.
- 03 · Mother’s call Mother’s call — While Seoyun waited for the bus, Mother called. When Seoyun said she wasn’t going to the place she’d been assigned to, Mother immediately replied that it was better not to go far on a day she’d been to the hospital. Mother: You’ve even been to the hospital—do you really need to go so far? Seoyun: Yeah. That’s why I’m not going.
- 04 · Overlapping maps Overlapping maps — The next day, Seoyun brought out a map showing both the city she planned to move to and the neighborhood where she lived. Haewol drew two blank spaces side by side between the two places and looked at the address Seoyun had erased first. Haewol: Seoyun, which of the two paths weighed on your heart more? Seoyun: But I’d already decided not to go.
Stories by Haewol
- Haewol
- After I put my child to bed, I wonder again whether to leave the work I know.
- Should I tell my family a secret?
- Living expenses after retirement: where do I start?
- It’s my day off, but I couldn’t even clean.
- With so few customers, should I keep the shop open?
- Every Sunday night, I weigh living together against living apart again.
- At the dinner table, I try to choose the first sentence of my life.
- After hearing the request, I took a window seat on the bus.