A Plethora Problem

I am overwhelmed.

I am sitting at my project table, also known as the sun room table, the puzzle table, my writing table, the game table, or the “let’s have a big dinner party table.” The rain is pouring down, just as it has every weekend here in New England since February, and the surface in front of me now has a new name: road trip table. My collection of Michelin Maps is spread out and my laptop and sketchbook are open, containing lists. Many lists.

These Michelin maps have been surprisingly difficult to find. Paper maps are so passe, so old school. Even the Michelin website doesn’t sell all their maps – many are simply out of stock or out of print. And because I want the independent bookstore that is a ten minute walk from my home to stay in business, I have given this shop my wish list. Over the past two months, various country and regional maps have been arriving in dribs and drabs, like surprise birthday gifts. Three came in stock last week, and together with my existing stash, I now have eight maps on this road trip table, offering thousands of roads, towns, and scenic attractions.

I look down at these maps and marvel that a 55-year-old car can take me so many places and provide so many choices. That the Blue Car can crack open the secrets of the world to so many experiences.

Then, maybe because of the rain, or because I have not thought enough about time and routes, and my endless and unrealistic lists, a thought pops into my head and won’t leave.

Plethora. There is a plethora of road trip possibilities here.

I suddenly feel I can’t face this right now. I close my laptop, put on my rain boots and jacket, and take Leo for a walk because he has been looking at me with sad eyes for a while, and as he has told me many times, a bit of bad weather is no excuse to stay in the house.

I walk in the rain, stomping in puddles with my wellies, and ignoring my wet pants. Leo is soaking wet, but he is a happy dog: he has peed four times and pooped twice. I guess he really did have to go outside. And all the while, on this wet walk, I think about choices.

A plethora of choices.

Choice is supposed to be a good thing. I have spent my life working to have more choices for myself, for my children. Isn’t that what we all do? As a child, I would never have guessed or even thought possible I would be planning this trip right now. I spent my summers playing baseball in the street and cooling off under fire hydrant sprinklers on steamy hot days. There were no airplane trips, no hotels, no resorts. We caught fireflies in mayonnaise jars, watching the swirl of their glowing bodies in the glass, before releasing them into the starry night. I knew what we would do each summer; my world was my neighborhood block.

And now, so many years later, I have an abundance of choices. A plethora of possibilities. I feel privileged and lucky. I feel gratitude. And I am also overwhelmed.

Oxford Languages defines plethora as “a large or excessive amount of something.” The word has its origins in mid-16th century medical language via late Latin from Greek, and means to “be full.”

I think about this excessive number of choices as I return from my soggy walk. I hang my dripping jacket and pants in the mudroom, towel down my soaking dog, and get in cozy clothes. The rain is now streaming down the windows, and I look out to the impressionist painting that is my yard and the view beyond. I make a cup of tea (because that is what I do) and head back to the road trip planning table. The maps stare up at me.

An excess of almost anything isn’t good.

I look up some synonyms for plethora. Just for fun, and because it is a good procrastination strategy to avoid those thousands of possible roads, opportunities, and experiences on the table in front of me. And I find new ways to describe my overwhelmed state.

Overabundance, surfeit, enough and to spare, superabundance, surplus, glut, flood, torrent, deluge, embarrassment…

…and a word I don’t know: nimiety, which means overabundance, or redundancy. It describes a state of being more than is necessary or desirable. It implies a quantity that is larger than what is needed or appropriate, it implies excessiveness.

That is what I am feeling right now. That all of this is excessive. That my choices are boundless. Even though this is obviously not true. I have time and budget limitations. I know I want to stay off the highways. I want to focus on small towns and areas that are hard to reach without a car. I want to avoid racing from place to place in some crazy goal or contest to achieve a certain number of miles driven over a set a number of days.

Choice is one of the things I usually love about road trips in the Blue Car. No train schedules to worry about, plane routes to ponder, rental contracts to consider. The world is wide open when I am behind the wheel, and I can change direction at any time.

I didn’t feel overwhelmed when preparing for my U.S. road trip. I suspect it was because I was traveling in my home country, in my native language, and I already knew so many things about the national parks, legendary scenic byways, and destinations I wanted to see. I wasn’t starting from scratch. I didn’t have to research, question, discover everything. Where are the best driving roads, what are the out-of-the-way places most worthy of visiting, how will the weather affect my routes? Now, as I look ahead to Europe, I am asking for advice and everyone I know is making suggestions, imploring me to “not miss their favorite special place.” Every decision needs a deep dive into a rabbit hole of information. There are just so, so many choices.

I think this is a problem many of us face in the course of our daily lives. It is a problem reflective of our modern world. As I was researching “plethora” online, an interesting graphic popped up, showing the use of the word over time:

Source: Oxford Languages

This graph really tells the story of post-World War II prosperity and abundance in the developed world: we have more disposable income, more information, more choices.

Do I want a red dress? I can head to the local mall, go downtown in Boston, or start searching online, for thousands of choices of styles, fabrics, prints. Replace dress with a table for your patio, a 500-piece puzzle, a watch—anything really. The story is the same.

Much has been written about the challenges of the multitude of possibilities in our lives. In “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less," Barry Schwartz explores the downside of having too many choices. With so many options, it is easy to see something we don’t have and feel dissatisfaction. Gee, we would be happier with that other thing over there. Or, once making a choice, it is easy to feel regret for the object we didn’t buy, the road we didn’t take. And of course, there is decision paralysis. How to choose in the first place? How to possibly narrow the field?

Decision paralysis seems a good way to describe what hits me as I look at my table of maps. The sheer number of choices has caused overload and I realize I must revise my trip planning approach. I also know I am fortunate in one regard. Using Schwartz’s parlance, I am a satisficer, not a maximizer. I do not get hung up on making the absolutely best choice, but rather, I seek the good enough option. I have always believed the perfect is the enemy of the good.

With that in mind, I wonder about the opposites of plethora, so I do another online search (this isn’t really necessary but I am still in road trip planning procrastination mode) and I find the following:

Dearth, paucity, barrenness, scarcity, inadequacy, deficiency.

Well, these don’t sound good either. I am not shipping the Blue Car all the way across the Atlantic for a paucity of choices. Or an inadequate trip that is deficient in fun and new experiences. But I want to maintain reasonable expectations and flexibility while needing to set some dates in stone (booking a Porsche Factory Tour in Germany, taking a photography workshop in France, driving the Nürburgring on Touristenfahrten).

I am grappling with what to cut, how to streamline, what the focus should be. I am searching for the middle ground, the Goldilocks bed that fits just right.

I look further down the list of synonyms and find some things that describe what I am after, this elusive middle ground. Not a plethora but maybe…

…a feast, which sounds varied, with new and familiar things, as long as I don’t stuff myself too full, with more than I need.

…a richness of experience – which says more about the quality than quantity of experiences during my trip.

…or plentitude, which has a nice ring to it – to have plenty and to be damn grateful for it. To not be greedy.

I look at my maps and my computer, and my lists upon lists. This is my decision. We all control the inputs. What we choose to see, to read, to ponder. We have the final say about what we allow to take up our precious time and brain space in our busy lives. I don’t have to read hundreds of posts in the “Road Trips in Europe” Facebook Group to see what everyone else is doing. I can make a fresh start.

I shut down my laptop and turn past the lists in my sketchbook to a clean white double-page spread. What would feel like a feast to me? What would seem like a plentitude of a road trip? I close my eyes and let my thoughts wander. It takes effort to avoid the lists in my head, the checklists, the “shoulds” and the “musts” of what to do while I am there, on this trip of a lifetime. I concentrate on the rain drumming on the roof overhead.

Maybe, I don’t want to go all the way to the boot of Italy and back. Just to say I did all of Italy. Maybe I am more interested in reaching the Arctic Circle, in traveling the scenic roads of Norway through the mountains and past fjords to Tromso and Narvik and possibly beyond.

If I want to explore forests, perhaps that should dictate where I go? What are the truly spectacular primeval woods and mystical and magical forests of Europe?

Suddenly, I am not considering a plethora of all choices, of the universal set. I am looking at a subset of possible Susan choices, dictated but what I want, by what feels right in my gut. I do want the iconic roads, mountain passes, and photo ops, but I can’t do them all. Not without those choices dictating my entire trip. I will see which ones fit best with my itinerary of plentitude. I will be content that this trip can’t and won’t be everything. And in that knowledge, I will develop my own filters and criteria to avoid the decision paralysis, to quickly judge and narrow the choices.

I am no longer overwhelmed at this moment, although I have been on this earth long enough to know that I likely may be drowning in choices again next week, when someone in the Porsche Club, or one of my children, offers a new “must do” suggestion that throws open all the possibilities. But I will handle it when the time comes.

I open my laptop and I am about to close down my search engine. Something catches my eye at the bottom of the screen. Vocabulary.com is offering an example of the use of plethora in a sentence.

If you have 15 different people who want to take you on a date, you have a plethora of romantic possibilities.

I laugh aloud. Maybe some things are ok in excess.

Leo looks at me like I am crazy.

I get to work planning my trip.