Analysis Paralysis and the Great Sock Quest

So I've spent most of my adult life walking around with mismatched socks, because that's pretty much how you roll when you're an Awkward Engineer.

More recently in my adult life, I've had the impetus to live my life in a sock matching manner. Thinking logically, my plan was to purge my drawer of all its contents and restock it with something like eighteen pairs of identical, perfectly matching socks that could be mixed and matched with no perceptible difference. There would be no sock orphans, no mismatched feet, only wonderful, effortless, sock nirvana.

Of course, this is putting a lot of eggs in one basket, so I went to the store to investigate my sock wearing options.

There were crew socks, ankle high socks, no-show socks, and tube socks. Those all came in a comfort fit, cool fit, regular fit, dry fight, slim fit (ok, that might have just been the t-shirts), extra warm, and what ever else I missed.

And then, they had socks in 5 packs, and 4 packs with 1 free. How are those different?!

It was a combinatorial sock explosion of sock options. And that was only one brand! I was overwhelmed, frightened, and confused. How could I know which sock was right?! I couldn't! It was complete madness. I got stuck and stared at socks for twenty minutes.

So instead of buying one giant set of matching socks, I just got a few to try.

Sock quest fail.