Intimate Thoughts
There is something about this existence as a human being that baffles me. Well, honestly there are a lot of things, but this one thing in particular gets me. How on earth can my brain be running at a million miles a minute every waking moment and even in my sleep?!
My brain thinks thoughts and ideas and makes up stories and circumstances. It has conversations with itself and with others. It makes up a TON of stuff including million dollar ideas that if I just had the time, recourses, money and energy for, I wouldn’t have to do anything but sit on a hammock with Matt, while Mason and Miles played on a beach in the middle of Southeast Asia somewhere.
It’s almost unfair at times. I write blog posts, I take photographs, I design albums. I paint paintings, make jewelry, cast sculptures. I travel the world, I have other children, I see my friends and hang out by a pool. I take a trip to Italy with my sister, I have an extended vacation with my husband, I volunteer. I donate my time and my creativity, I’m a room mother, I do all of these things, in my mind. Yes, some of them come true but a good portion do not. They just mull around up there, taking space, pushing their way forward at different times of the day. It’s like a mob up there sometimes. Each idea elbowing it’s way to the front while I try to push back to let the ones that are “important” through. The ones that I need to spend time thinking about. The jobs that I have on the table, the marketing ideas that I want to implement, what the boys need and of course, what we’re having for dinner. That one always seems to push its way to the front!
I sometimes wish I had the time to just surf the web. Finding inspiration from other creative people. Time to go to a museum and just wander. Look at the creations of other human beings. See for a moment, the things that run through their minds that they turn into tangible objects for the world to see, appreciate, judge and admire. Time to write a blog post every day or at least every other, but the laundry needs to be done or the boys need me to play and dinner needs to be made. Honestly, those mundane acts of taking care of my family do give me joy. They fulfill a part of me that I didn’t know existed. The maternal side that I tried to hush for most of my youth.
I wish that I could turn down the thoughts that are negative and judgmental. The ones I have of myself. Of what I’m not doing, not saying or am saying that isn’t nice. The ones of others that I have no business thinking. It’s a strange thing to listen to your mind, to hear what it has to say because sometimes, it isn’t even me. I don’t want to be thinking those thoughts, like all of the terrible things that could happen to my children, my husband, my friends and family. I have become better over the years at silencing those thoughts more quickly than in the past. Trained myself to think about the good and happy things that happen or that I imagine happening.
And, all of those thoughts, good and bad, I guess, make up me. Who I am and what makes me unique. So, I try to be gentle with myself and just listen, or act on them, or move them aside when they elbow their way to the front to be heard. I write these posts when I can, I do what needs to be done at the moment and try to be present to that instead of whirling inside of all of the thoughts that run through my head that I don’t have the time, money or energy to accomplish. Because what it all boils down to is choice. My choice. What I do, what I have time for and what I think about. Isn’t that strange? We get to make that up. We get to decide. So, today, I decide to be happy and to do what I can to check off the things that I decided to put on my list.
Simple, when you really think about it.
