unity and variety and chaos

Making art, I am learning, is all about choices. It is telling stories, as my design instructor would say. Making choices is HARD for me, and probably the biggest block for me as an artist, as a professional, as a regular person who has to go the grocery store on a regular basis. Sometimes I feel like each choice I make will determine the course of my life--down to deciding whether to pay 99 cents for organic black beans, or get the store brand that is two cans for $1. On my limited budget, I want to get the better deal, but I want to be consistent with my values and buy organic, because it is a better deal for my body, for the earth, for the small farmer producing the organic beans. And so it goes, ten minutes of my life deciding which can of beans to buy. This problem with choice making was magnified in our first assignment in design on "composition". We are to choose two or three shapes, and make five compositions, going from unified to chaotic. I am stuck on what shapes to choose. Circles, lines, squares, triangles, squiggles, spirals, stars, flowers, splotches, narrow, fat, swooshy, straight, crooked....oh my. So many possibilities to choose from, so many ways to tell the story, a story, of unity and variety and chaos. It is a relief to turn to the clay from construction paper and exacto knifes and just work on making the same cylinders, over and over and over.