You know how cats never seem to tire of the "bed-micees!!" game? Every other night they scamper up into bed as you snuggle down to rest and pretty soon your toes are being nommed on by a wily cat in no mood to sleep. And so begins the process of gentle shooing away, verbal threats to de-claw, flinging of slippers at the cat's body and then the ultimate kitteh insult, room removal. This usually results in a ticked off feline meowing and scratching to be let back into the bedroom in short order and the foot-atackee breaking their previously asserted iron-will. Thus the cycle may begin again until sleep overtakes all involved.
I mention this as an analogy for how my brain seems to work sometimes. Bear with me, I swear it makes sense. Sort of.
The part of me that wants to stop thinking and get some quality rest = Owner of Cat
The part of me that constantly brings up new and useless topics to think about at obscene hours and won't let go until all ideas and options have been considered = Predatory Cat
If you followed that (as I know you did because my late night logic never fails) then you can also understand the following 1) I do not feel fully in control of my brain, insofar as I cannot shut it off even with cups of tea, threats of auto-lobotomy, or counting backward from 899 when the clock clearly says it is bedtime. 2) It seems to happen incredibly frequently and I have not got any better at dealing with it over the years. 3) I have managed to conceptually separate parts of my brain and brain function from one another, even as I know it is all one mushy mass of fatty grey matter and electric connections.
Thinking about thinking is called metacognition and it is one of my favorite words as well as a generally fun activity It is possible that this is especially when you are a psych nerd as I consider myself. However, I must raise objection to it when I am just reaching full-speed at 3am. Ultimately, I would like to reconcile my joy at having an active and fairly free-association thinking style with being able to exert some control over the operating hours.
I used to be concerned if the wackiness of all the stuff I spend time mentally sifting through was normal. Like, do other people create a pros and cons list of buying generic brand condiments that is as frightfully exhaustive as mine? You'll notice the pass tense thing going on. That is because I am thankfully over deciding what parts of me are crazy. I'm pretty sure the answer is yes in all cases. Now I am focused on adjusting the volume/timing of the nuttiness. Or learning to effectively respond to the intensity of the feline ferocity that is pouncing on my feets.
-and she ends with the same metaphor she started with. Shwing!
2 comments:
You just blew my mind.
Because that made much more sense than I thought it would.
Yeah, cat infused analogies never fail. thanks for reading! I really have no idea if anyone actually reads what I write, so your comments are a real treat.
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