Joseph Brinkman hated choices. To him life was nothing more than an endless series of angst-ridden options. Butter or cream cheese? Subway or bus? Leno or Letterman? Such mundane questions about his daily life often left him paralyzed with dread. Eventually his condition became so debilitating that he sought counseling from Dr. Feathernut Sloan — one of only three psychiatrists in the entire tri-state area willing to accept Brinkman’s dodgy health insurance.

Twice a week for nearly a year Brinkman made the perilous journey to the dark recesses of Queens where Dr. Sloan’s office stood between an out of business pet store and an industrial noodle manufacturer. Being one of her only patients, Sloan tackled Brinkman’s problem with great fervor. She pored over old texts and journals and made numerous overseas calls to specialists in London and Prague. Sloan considered herself a bit of an avant-garde therapist and when conventional methods failed to alleviate his decidophobia she tried all sorts of counterintuitive techniques such as spontaneously slapping Brinkman when he walked in her office or making him to wear odd hats while talking about his sex life.

Needless to say, the therapy turned out to be a worse than Brinkman could have ever imagined. Not only did he still have trouble deciding which shampoo to buy, but Sloan claimed to have uncovered a variety of other mental conditions that Joey never knew existed, and more importantly, didn’t want to know about. In addition to the severe form of decidophobia, Sloan diagnosed Joey with manic-depression; a latent form of pyromania; and even hinted that he possessed a second personality, a little girl named Debbie that was just aching to come out.

Brinkman would be the first to admit that when he was a kid he had a great passion for lighting fires and blowing things up; he just chalked it up to living in suburban America. He could even buy the manic-depressive bit, but the whole Debbie thing was both preposterous and frightening. The day Debbie allegedly revealed herself, Brinkman left Sloan’s office for the last time, decidedly walked across the street to the nearest bar and did three straight shots of bourbon. After the third shot he said to the bartender, "Did you know psychiatrists are nothing more than crooked auto mechanics with advanced degrees, punching holes in your oil pan when no one’s looking?" The bartender nodded vaguely then moseyed to the other end of the bar to polish some beer glasses. If there really were a secret Debbie inside of Joey, he was going to take her with him to his grave.

As fate would have it a most serendipitous event occurred in the days following Brinkman's last visit with Dr. Sloan and his decidophobia was finally brought under control. He was sitting in his cubicle at the International Herb and Spice corporate headquarters, staring at the walls, about to doze off, when Lenny the mailroom room guy swung by with a cartload of office supplies.

"Get ‘em while supplies last," quipped Lenny. Brinkman wiped the sleep from his eyes and anxiously began sifting through the cart. He carefully selected one item, returned it a moment later, and then took another. Lenny didn’t have to be a psychiatrist to know that Brinkman had a few loose screws. "I tell you what," he said. "I’m gonna go have a smoke and I’ll be back in ten minutes. Go crazy." In the end, and as usual, Brinkman took one of everything, but this time included in the one of everything was a new revolutionary product that would quickly become more popular than the number two pencil.

The year was 1981 and the new office product was called Post-It Notes. They were, and still are, manufactured by a company, called 3M. Coincidentally, Joseph Brinkman owned nine shares of 3M, which he inherited from his Uncle Pete. Uncle Pete was a hell of a guy, but died of liver cancer at a fairly young age. For that reason, and that reason alone, Brinkman was particularly fond of his equity stake in the company and felt a certain pride that he was one of the few people in the world that actually knew that the three Ms stood for Minnesota, Mining and Manufacturing.

Brinkman held the 3M Post-It pad for the first time and examined it as if it was a strange and beautiful butterfly. He placed it on his desk and wrote on the top sheet, "Call Grandma for her birthday?" He slowly peeled the sheet from the pad and pressed it to the back of his hand.

Before he left the office Brinkman made the decision to call his grandmother. He shouted "Happy birthday!" into the phone, but Grandma Brinkman was wickedly old and had no idea it was her birthday or that she even had a grandson named Joseph. She hung up on him after unleashing a barrage of ugly four-letter words. Nevertheless, from that moment on, Post-It notes became an integral part of Joseph Brinkman’s decision-making process. He began writing all of his major, and most of his minor dilemmas, on the sticky note pads and affixed the little yellow squares to walls and windows and mirrors and books and furniture and just about anything they would adhere to. When his life was in a particular state of chaos the inside of his apartment looked like a large molting chicken.

On each sticky note Brinkman wrote the date in the top left corner and below he posed two or three questions relevant to his little world. An old sticky from 6/6/89 read: Should I buy a camcorder? Teach English in Japan? Another from 8/2/91: Ask Gabby Francescovich to dinner? What about the Peace Corps? Buttermilk?

When the questions became obsolete, either because they were no longer relevant, or because a decision had been rendered, he carefully re-stuck them together, in a general chronological order, and so the edges precisely overlapped, then stacked them in an ancient steamer trunk that his distant relatives supposedly used to escape the Irish Potato Famine.

After nearly a decade Brinkman never once started a fire with malicious intent and little Debbie never came out to play, but his decidophobia was under control and the old potato famine steamer trunk was nearly a two-thirds full of sticky notes. Brinkman decided when he became very old, in the weeks leading up to his death; he would read his elongated sticky book, one sheet after another, then light them all on fire. This way, he felt he could put his entire life in perspective, even though, at the time, he thought it wouldn’t make any of the bestseller lists.