I’ve often thought that my brain is like one of those game show phone booths where the contestant gets in, and a giant fan starts blowing around a bunch of money. The contestant has a certain amount of time to gather as much money as they can, and anything they are able to grab, they keep. This always seems easy enough to the viewer, until they watch contestant after contestant fail to get more than a couple of bucks.
For me, the money floating around are thoughts that I have throughout the day. I can see them. I can visualize how to wrangle them and even explain it (spend the money). I even understand intuitively what I need to do in order to get a handle on it (turn off the fan). The problem is, once I am in the booth, I get excited and can’t seem to execute on any of this. I will end up with a fist full of 1’s, and even then, I will loose most of them trying to grab a 100. In the end, I will walk out of the booth, having been surrounded by thousands and thousands of dollars, with perhaps six dollar bills. And three of those will be counterfeit.
As I write this, I have already opened three new tabs on my browser for various reasons. Some of those reasons can be justified as “research,” but others still are nothing but shiny objects. I have checked my email at least three times, and my phone is set up for notifications when an email comes in. I habitually check it because “you never know.” Even in the name of research, I have gone through a blog post that I was reading and then clicked back through the rest of the blog to compare it to mine.
The struggle that I have is accepting this trait as a positive thing. Many people have told me that it is, and that it is unhealthy to be so hard on myself for not being able to focus. My argument is always something along the line of “well, I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone that most areas of my life are not where they could be at this point in my life.” That is an argument that doesn’t really hold up to any sort of critique though. As I take a step back and look at things, it becomes clear that I have always been able to get exactly what I want out of life. The issue that I have is convincing myself that I actually want what I say I want.
This was the reason for starting this blog. It’s my way of capturing all, or at least some, of the random ideas that are floating around up there. Sticking with the cash in the phone booth theme, I’ve still yet to decide if this is more of a large net to catch everything, or if it is simply turning off the fan and just picking up the bills off the floor. That is something that can evolve with time. There will be some days in which it will be more like the net, i.e. everything will still be a clusterfuck, but at least it will be somewhat in one place. Other days will seem like turning off the fan, or at least turning it down significantly, and gathering the right thoughts in the right order.
