Brainstorms
Unlike the Scarecrow, I have a brain.
(Jury's still out on courage or a heart.)
This isn't a defensive post. I wasn't called into question regarding my intelligence or creativity. I haven't been making a habit of (excessively) bad decision making. My verbal and writing skills are still intact. I can still do simple math (at least as well as I ever could). No, my friends, this is simply a statement of fact. I have a brain.
I know I have a brain because it's trying to kill me.
For the last few weeks my personal schedule has slipped further and further out of whack. It started just a little bit before the Daylight Savings time change and has only gotten worse since then. What began as a few nights of going to bed WAY too late, turned into an actual sleep pattern adjustment without me realizing it. Now I'm in an ongoing battle with my brain and body to get things back into a functional mode. This battle isn't going well. The struggle to get things back on track is how I know my brain is trying to kill me.
Regardless of how physically tired I am, no matter how sleepy I feel, all this week it hasn't mattered. I lay down. I pull up the covers. I tell myself I'm going to sleep. I shut my eyes. Within minutes, every thought imaginable and every topic of mental dialogue comes pouring in. I'm suddenly wide awake and my brain is running at a cheetah's pace. Unlike the majestic cheetah, however, my brain doesn't know when to stop.
My nightly mental circus includes storylines and characters for the current and future projects. It includes random character ideas for gaming and potential writing development. There have been countless "what if" scenarios involving past jobs, past relationships, outcomes of my family tree and DNA research, politics and current events, what being in a relationship would be like for me now, etc. I've gone down the rabbit hole of lost pets, pets I had to rehome and how they might be doing, what happens when my current companion dies, and would I be willing to start over with another pet. I've revisited my father's illness and death along with all of the facets of that experience. I analyzed the shit out of dreams that I had in the few hours I managed to actually sleep during the early part of the week. I played through entire improbable scenarios involving an individual I saw randomly in a restaurant earlier the same evening. I plotted an entire business model and possible floor design for a gaming and book store in a building on Main Street that I don't even know for certain whether or not it's for sale. Also, it's a business model that would likely fail based on the demographic of this area, but clearly that's not the point when the brainstorm is rolling through. Who needs logic when you have IDEAS?
Do you know what I wasn't doing during these nights of relentless and unsolicited brainstorming?
That's right. Sleeping.
It's been just three to four hours each night, tossing and turning, with no end to the flood of thoughts and ideas that rush in as soon as my head hits the pillow. No matter how much I try to block out the stream of thoughts, no matter how much I mentally scream, "For the love of God, shut the f*** up!", my brain won't stop. It hasn't all week, and for the life of me, I don't know why. It's not like it happens during the day or early evening hours.
As I've considered the matter in my intentionally waking hours, I can only assume that this mental storm is stress and anxiety related. It's like my brain is trying to do the level of processing that is usually reserved for the sleep and dream cycle, but it isn't waiting for the reboot that should be triggered by my actually sleeping. To continue the computer analogy, it's like I'm trying to defrag the hard drive with 20 programs running and a download in progress for World of Warcraft. (I don't actually know computers, but I assume that this concept doesn't actually work, which is kind of my point.)
I'm not really sure how to fix this problem. I assume it has something to do with getting myself on a reasonable schedule again. I also assume that that this effort may require a full stop for a time on the activities that I actually have managed to keep regulated (i.e. walking nightly). Maybe I can do absolutely nothing for a day or two. Bore myself into submission so I actually go to bed when I should. Reboot the system with a "full shutdown." It's a theory, I guess. Hell, it may even be a plan. What I do know for sure, though, is that this needs to stop. It's done nothing good for my writing or my other responsibilities and it's been frustrating me in every possible way.
I guess we'll see what happens next. In the mean time, I hope you're all healthy and well-rested. Somebody around here should be.
