About

I love to live in my head.  On a daily basis I picture the thoughts racing around in my brain like 10,000 little silver balls jolting through the obstacles of a pinball machine.  Sometimes I fixate on just one to examine in great detail, other times I jump from one to another pausing just long enough to acknowledge the message, like the ticker tape on the bottom of the CNN screen, before the next thought comes into view and whisks my attention away.

This gift (as I so choose to call it) is only magnified by my excruciating attention to vivid detail.  As a child, my Mother, God bless her, would role her eyes but graciously (and patiently) wait while I recollected the most infinitesimal details of whatever ridiculous and farfetched dream I had traveled through in my slumbers the night before.  To this day, any close friend or family member knows that the consequence of asking me to briefly describe the plot of a movie or book or even just the highlights of my day is a requisite 30-minute sit down (at minimum) complete with character descriptions, back stories, and the underlying motivations of the main players involved in the story.

As I’ve entered my 30s, I’ve begun to recognize that there is true value to my analytical brain. It has been the foundation of my self-growth, the impetus of my career endeavors (I am a psychologist after all), and the ever-present element of entertainment when I find myself in isolated circumstances.   Edgar Allan Poe once wrote in The Murders in the Rue Morgue,

“It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.”

And yet, as the saying goes, “this is my gift, my curse” (yes, I’m quoting Spiderman, don’t judge), and my proclivities towards analysis have brought their fair share of unconstructive interpretations.  You see, if I keep my myriad of thoughts to myself there is no one but me to challenge their veracity.  Unfortunately, for a detail-oriented, semi-perfectionist, who holds herself to a sometimes ridiculously high standard, this can lead to a distorted amalgamation of deceitful wisdom (which one could easily argue is not wisdom at all).

So, I have decided to place my internal ramblings on an external surface, presented for observation, open for discussion, or simply available for amusement.  The hope is those thoughts will transform into more honest reflections and push me towards living a more transparent, and consequently authentic, life.  The reality is I like the idea of my thoughts on public display through the medium of cyberspace. Perhaps they will be read by my eyes only, or those of a few gracious (and guilt-induced!) friends.  Or maybe my thoughts will gain a bit of notoriety; who knows?  Whatever the end result, my thoughts, like those dancing spheres in the pinball machine, are really just desperately trying to stay in play, rack up points and avoid extinction by disappearing down the drain.

And that’s me in a nutshell (you did read the part about me being overly detail-oriented right?).