Back on Track

I'm back. Which naturally leads to the question of where have I been? My best possible explanation is everywhere and nowhere. I am at the end of two short work weeks; which should have provided plenty of time to get my thoughts on paper, but the extra hours left me with too much time to think. Scatterbrained is not an adjective that I would generally use to describe myself, just the opposite would be more likely, and yet in the last two weeks I have lost my car keys twice, lost the claim ticket for a New York City garage, misplaced clothing in my own house, said goodbye to all the photos on my iPhone after I forgot to back up, and on more than one of those occasions, thought I was losing my mind. Each of the last few days when I attempted to write I could not find my way to a clear thought and abandoned the process. Tonight I am going to push through, because maybe it’s what I need to do to get out of this cycle. I am committed to reigning in the chaos in my head, so bear with me while I attempt to sort it out.

I am a planner, not in the organized, detailed, checklist way, it's more about controlling a situation or an outcome. A person like me, who is so busy over thinking everything, has what-if scenarios for almost everything in my life. Not just the big stuff, even day to day activities can play out a thousand different ways in my brain. I run through conversations I haven't had yet, I deal with issues and obstacles that have yet to occur and play out full-scale outcomes for each of them. Some people might find this to be a useful personality trait, but lately I'm finding that I'm so busy anticipating what could happen, that I am preventing life from unfolding on its own. On the small scale, like a blog post, I have always started with an idea and let my words take me where they naturally want to go. Most days I mentally write the opener, sometimes the title will help me define my direction, but I leave the bulk of the word count to happen organically. This week, I wrestled with every word; what story am I trying to tell, what am I trying to say, where do I want to end? I was so focused on the finish line that I could not get out of the starting gate. In the bigger picture, as I encounter new opportunities and challenges I am paralyzed by the all-consuming need to imagine how they will play out and where they will leave me on the other side. Until now, I felt that if I covered all the bases I could control the desired outcome or at least be prepared for the undesired ones. I envision the end result, I work through the road blocks, and I give myself the best chance to get what I want. Or so I thought; my plan is apparently not the only one and I'm seeing that more and more these days. I cannot control or predict all the variables, and I have to stop trying to.

The funny thing is that, at the moment, nothing in my life is terribly off kilter. Life, in the grand scheme of things, is pretty good. With no major dilemmas to dwell on, that leaves the field wide open to contemplate just about anything. I think I was on the right track back in the beginning when I said that blogging was helping me sleep because it gave me an outlet for the stuff that kept me up at night. Somehow I've returned to sleepless nights, unable to turn off the valve when it's time to rest. It’s as if this blog has opened Pandora’s Box and I can't get the unwanted thoughts back to a safe place. This week in particular, probably because I had excess down time, I was so caught up in contemplation that I barely slept. My days were spent in a hazy focus, which would probably account for the aforementioned “scattered” brain activity. Some nights I jump from thought to thought, others I focus so intently on a single thing that I force myself to stay awake to reach a conclusion. There are nights I have fought the urge to wake up and write, just to stay in my bed and attempt to commit my words to memory so that I can transcribe them in the morning. This method never works out the way I planned, my mental shorthand is apparently pretty inaccurate. I have never been the type of person who skips ahead in a book to see what happens, the joy of reading is getting lost in the story and letting the ending unfold naturally. And yet when it comes to the book of my life, I can't stop thinking about what's in store in the chapters to come. Life has certainly given me plenty of examples to prove that you can't always plan for the future and just as many to illustrate that the happiest moments are usually the ones that show up completely unexpected or anticipated. Even when facing a real live problem, hours of evaluation never guarantees a clear solution, sometimes there just isn't an answer. Other times the answer is obvious,but unwanted, and the extra time is spent inventing more favorable options that rarely exist.

I need to start to accept the peace that can come with the unplanned. If I have no expectation of the outcome, maybe the highs will be more exciting and the lows less disappointing. Life can't always be tied up in a neat little package that I wrap up in a sleepless night or a well thought out dream. So I am going to try and let go a little and enjoy the unplanned or at least attempt to take things one day at a time instead of mapping out an itinerary for the foreseeable future. The best parts of even the last few months were not in any game plan I had prepared. Somehow I got off track this week, my mind running in a million directions, none of them heading anywhere. I want to get back to the place where this blog gave me an outlet to say whatever was on my mind. Here's hoping that I've turned the corner; one day, one thought. No need to turn over every stone every day, some days its best to just deal with the pebbles.