Neurosis

I've hit that neurotic state of word-smithing in which I belabor over every word and punctuation. After my good friend indulged me enough to talk about one single sentence for over an hour, during which my sanity was completely lost, our conversation looked like this:

[after he sends me a suggestion for the said sentence]

me: i'm not feeling it

a lot of it having to do with the definite article

um... yeah, we're now talking about "the" in a sentence

J: haha, well it's your "the"

that was in your original sentence

i don't really know what your gripe is there

feels pretty neutral to me

me: my the was preceded by a preposition

grammatically, it makes a lot of difference

i am hitting a neurotic state, I'm sorry

J: but does it change the meaning

you're already comfortable using sentence fragments here, so i assume grammaticality is not the issue

me: the fragments are direct quotes that give imediacy to the moment

J: i'm going to leave this to you

i think you should sleep on it

me: nooooooooo

Jerome: at this point i do think you're getting hung up

any of these variations we've tried barely change how the message comes off

no one is going to notice the level of subtlety you're getting at

me: i know

but you know that i am neurotic with words torture myself with the placement of punctuation

Jerome: yeah but it's kinda like death by analysis

me: such is my fate!

i don't know. i'm losing my mind. give me a pithy advice and go to bed

Jerome: sometimes you just need to take off the thinking cap and move forward

me: and or to?

Jerome: because chances are, you've already done good thinking, and it'll turn out fine

i think both are valid

me: manifestly false. quick! go before i argue that point to ad nauseum