I got my first tattoo in October of 2018. I had started planning it and thinking about it nearly a year in advance. I researched in depth analyses of the quote I got to make sure that I understood its meaning and would be able to explain it. I thought about it constantly, applying it to my life and making the reason why it meant enough to me for it to be permanently on my body abundantly clear to myself.

I looked at pain charts to see what part of my body it could go on that wouldn't hurt too badly and would also be easily covered for when I got a job. I researched tattoo parlors and artists for months to make sure I would go to a place and a person that would do a great job. I picked a date to get it on that meant something to me.

I got my second tattoo in mid-July of 2019, two days ago as I'm writing this, and it was the most spontaneous decision I've ever made.

I walked out of a bookstore and saw a tattoo parlor right across the street. I thought to myself, "Should I do it?", and I decided that I shouldn't. I hadn't planned it. I didn't know anything about the parlor or its artists or anything. I didn't even know what I wanted to get.

So, I wandered around the area, stopping in shaded areas to look up the parlor and check its reviews. I was still telling myself not to do it.

Then, it was 4:30, and I was standing outside the parlor again, trying to sneakily look in its windows to check out the flashes on the wall. There was a falafel shop down the street that I was dying to go to but didn't open until 5:00. I had half an hour to kill, and I had already walked around the entire town. I had nowhere to go besides the tattoo parlor.

Naturally, I pulled up a decision maker website on my phone. I typed in my question: should I get a tattoo? I typed in my options: yes or no. I hit "make my decision".

The decision maker spoke, and I walked into the tattoo parlor, still unsure of what it was I was going to get and where I was going to get it. The guy at the desk asked what I wanted, and I said the first thing I thought of: so it goes, a reference to one of my favorite books, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. He asked me where I wanted it, and I pointed to my my forearm, on the left, right above my hand.

So, I got my second tattoo as a way to waste thirty minutes so I could get a falafel and because easydecisionmaker.com told me to do it. I spontaneously decided to permanently alter my body, and as soon as I did it, I thought I was going to regret it. I'm not a spontaneous person at all. I'm a planner. I plan days, weeks, months, years in advance. Last minute plans give me anxiety, and not knowing today what I'm doing tomorrow makes me want to do nothing at all.

Yet I don't regret it at all. In fact, I can't stop looking at the new ink on my skin, running my fingers over it, and smiling at it.

I didn't plan this tattoo at all, but I knew I wanted it. I'm not even sure how to explain what "so it goes" means, but I know it means enough to me that I want it on my body forever. I have the rest of my life to pinpoint what it means to me, and for once, I'm not in any rush to figure it out. For once, I'm just enjoying something without overthinking it. For once, I feel free.

Maybe that's the whole point of the quote, after all. Vonnegut says it as a way of saying that something has happened, and there's nothing that can be done about it. You just have to accept it and keep moving forward. This tattoo is a thing that I did, and now I'm moving forward.

Like Vonnegut said at the beginning of Slaughterhouse Five, "And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes. People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore."