Sunday, February 14, 2010

Ow, My Disorganized Brain!

At this moment I am thinking about:
making a cake
my bass lessons
my dog's drug and squeezing schedule
my parents
my vegetable garden
my non -vegetable garden
the friends I need to keep track of
my manicure? I know - but there it is.
my next job
going back to school for either art therapy or game design
vipassana meditation
whether it means anything that I don't care about the Winter Olympics (although I'm sorry about the lugist who died)
wouldn't it be nice if there were a couple more hours of Down By Law to watch

I was planning to make a cake today but the cake pans are in Cambridge as are my bass and bass homework.

In fact, it seems like I can't complete any task at all without having to make a few trips because I forgot something. Where the HELL is my pen? I just had it here a second ago!

This is not new. Being like this made me think I was stupid when I was a kid. Now it just aggravates the hell out of me.

I've heard that some people can focus. They can concentrate on one thing and become very good at it. I imagine that they think in an orderly fashion and rarely forget to bring all of the elements of what they need with them from place to place.

My brain doesn't seem to want to think about only one thing at a time. Is it that I'm deathly afraid to be bored? Do I require a certain amount of background confusion to feel normal? Am I just a little bit A.D.D?

Supposedly vipassana meditation helps one to control one's mind and to make better friends with chaos. I've been putting off making a concerted effort at it though.

Part of me is afraid to try to think differently than I do. I'm afraid who I am will be less interesting if I have fewer things going on inside. I really depend on my insides because I haven't got a lot to show on the outside: normal accomplishments that most adults have like salary, title, professional reputation.

Part of me is afraid that if I think more conventionally I won't be able to be as (ugh, here we go...) creative as I am now.

On the other hand, I already have thousands of ideas. Many, many ideas. Lists of them - enough to make for decades of work. Maybe if I was a more organized thinker I could execute more of them? Maybe then I could even take them to the next level and promote them and myself?

And part of me feels like a sniveling conformist for wanting to accomplish things and get credit for it.

I suppose it's possible that meditation could just give me better perspective about the way my mind works. It might even help me be more logical and less likely to waltz myself down a blind alley.

Once you change your brain though (neural pathways and all) you can't change it back. On the other hand, life's a journey and you're brain's changing all the time anyway. I might as well try to take the reins.

Come to think of it, maybe I like reading so much because it's an imposed system of focus for me. It might be a relief to accept some limits.

2 comments:

lizkdc said...

There's a lot in this post, isn't there? That there are riches inside your head, but you're afraid you're doing it wrong (life, thinking, choices). Big stuff. Only answer I have is that I'll enjoy seeing you do what you do.

Unknown said...

Thanks Liz.