This is one of the reasons I love Ask Metafilter.

So one of these days I’ll get myself another copy of Danny Dunn, Time Traveler from Amazon.

“Take it easy on the kid, SilverFox316; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip.”

Our apartment lease is up for renewal on May 1. A few weeks ago we received a letter from our landlord offering to renew the lease with a rent increase of $25 per month.

Ordinarily that would be fine, but in this economy, with rents falling all over the city, any increase struck us as ridiculous. And a search of Craigslist showed that our managment company was offering a couple of other one-bedrooms in our building for at least $500/month cheaper than what we’re currently paying. Obviously their offer to renew with a rent increase was meant for the stupid, timid or uninformed.

So I’m proud of myself that I managed yesterday to negotiate a $533/month reduction in our monthly rent. We’d actually be getting a month free in the new lease, so the total annual rent would be spread over 11 months instead of 12, but over the course of the year it works out to $533/month less. (That explains the awkward amount of the decrease.)

I should be happy about this, but instead, it’s gotten me stressed. Because it entails making a decision. Should we renew at this better rate? Or should we look for a one-bedroom at an even cheaper rate? Or, since I’ll soon be working from home a few days a week and rents are going down, should we find a two-bedroom that is more expensive but still perhaps a little cheaper than what we’re paying now?

I am awful at making decisions, because instead of seeing a few upsides to choose from, I only see the downsides to choose from.

Ultimately we’ll probably renew our lease at the reduced rent. The free month will be an instant jolt of money to the bank account, and we don’t really feel like dealing with a move, and we’re reasonably happy where we are.

This all ties into a big meta-issue I’ve been experiencing in several areas of my life lately. What do you do when nothing in your life is perfect? Do you accept things the way they are? Or do you try to change them, even though perfection is impossible and you don’t know whether a change will make things better or worse? How do you live a happy life when you wish things were different? If you accept imperfection in your life, aren’t you admitting failure? And doesn’t that mean that nothing will ever get better? And if you give up idealism, aren’t you also giving up hope?

Accept the things you cannot change, and change the things you cannot accept, but how the hell do you actually decide which is which?

Still, I at least wrote a journal entry yesterday in which I congratulated myself on the rent negotation. Sometimes I can at least try to be good to myself.