Most of the time I don’t care, like now, at 3 am. But other times – wow, its like I can’t stop myself. This manifests itself in two ways:
(1) I say things in my head I wish I would just say out loud. For example, I have a friend, she’s 40 – old enough and professional enough to know better – but she leaves her blackberry on vibrate – even during meetings she’s leading. Vibrate is just as distracting as a ring. And yesterday during a meeting I invited her to, she actually completely silenced her phone, but kept texting/emailing. to me, that sends a signal of “you group of people here in front of me aren’t interesting enough to hold my attention.” while that might not be the case, that what it seems like to me. And man, I have been wanting to tell her this for WEEKS!
I also swear at crappy drivers….but its probably better to keep that inside.
(2) I’ve had an imaginary life going for as long as I can remember. It’s like I will be sitting somewhere bored, or just at home doing nothing….wherever, and I will just distract myself with this fake life – people, places, things. Sometimes, this helps me fall asleep, so that’s not so bad. Some of the “storylines” have lasted years. Some are a lot more short lived. If I wrote all this stuff down….wow, Id have epic novels up the wazoo.
Sometimes the two weave together – mixing something I really need to be saying out loud into my “inner world.” The other day I kind of had to tell myself “stop it.” I was dwelling on a bad situation and just decided that I needed to either say something to somebody (anybody) out loud, or find something else to think about.
But have you ever tried stopping yourself from thinking something? It’s not easy!
