Too Many Thoughts

I'm sitting at a computer most of the day at work, and when thoughts occur to me I usually jot them down in a little text file using Windows Notepad.  You know how we have certain things that we load in our pockets each day when we leave for work?  When I was young I carried a pocketknife.  Things have changed: Now I carry a flash drive to work with me every day.  When I have these little epiphanies at work they end up on my flash drive so I can refer back to them.  I wrote this blog entry several months ago, but for whatever reason it fell through the cracks and I never got it posted.  I just "found" it again this morning.

Here's how it went:

I was lying in bed one morning not able to get back to sleep when the realization came to me.   (That is a time when many such troubling thoughts tend to wash over me.)  I guess you might say that my mind kind of runs away with every thought that surfaces when I'm trying to get back to sleep but cannot.

I seem to now possess a certain level of anxiety about things.  I used to pride myself on being able to resist worrying about anything.  "Relax," I'd tell myself, "it's nothing to worry about."  Over the years that became less and less accurate.  I'm sure I blogged it before, but I'm most definitely a worrier now.

But that isn't really what this is about.

I'm talking about a confusion of thoughts--Almost like multiple people talking at once. Many paths and possible outcomes of something. These are usually something that I shouldn't be concerned with in the first place.  At least not any more concerned other than just giving it passing mental glance.  I get frustrated at the swirling maelstrom of thoughts that are bombarding me and I just don't know where to start.  That's only part of the problem.  The other part of the problem is that sometimes there really isn't even a problem to address in the first place!

A good example of it was was back before Suzie and I were leaving on our vacation to Kauai back in September. (I jotted it down so I wouldn't forget it.)  As I recall it was still a few days before our departure, and there I was again--lying in bed a couple of hours before my alarm is due to go off--and my mind took off again:
What items should I take? Do I even own what I need? What luggage should I take?  Will I have enough room for all my stuff to fit in it?  What if my plane goes down in the ocean on my way home.  If I survive, I won't be able to save all my pictures or my camera or my laptop.  When I do come back by myself, what will I need to catch up on? Will Keith be there?  Will I have to feed both of us? What if he doesn't like what I make?  Does he even like me?  What if something happens to Suzie on her way home? Would I still want to stay here in this house? What would I do?  Where would I go?

See?  It just keeps escalating.

Looking at in in print makes it look ridiculous, but I assure you, it sometimes turns into a non-ending train of thought, with every worry leading to another.  The thing is, each of the questions I put down above more than likely had other questions in between them. 

I don't know what makes this come and go.  I just worry (See?  There I go again!) that it may get worse.  I'm pretty sure I won't be as bad as my dad because I'm already past the age when he got noticeably bad.  For some time now he hasn't been able to follow any real train of thought at all.  If you start talking to him he only hears a word or two in each sentence. I don't know if his mind is barely moving or going 100,000 miles an hour.  I don't want to get to that point, but like I said: I can see similarities.

I can recall one time in recent years when I really did feel helpless, and that actually was two incidents in one.  Both took place in Las Vegas when Sarah and I were on vacation a few years back. I literally cried out of frustration at one point.  I was overwhelmed with what I was facing because I couldn't come up with the answer when I needed to.  The only difference between what took place there and what could take place here in a similar situation during my day-to-day activities here was just one factor: I was in unfamiliar surroundings at the time.  I think it was that one factor that tipped my mental state over the edge.

I believe what happens in those situations is when a certain amount of things happen, my wall of anxiety goes up and blocks logical thought.  I guess you could almost call it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When that kind of stuff happens I want my mind to shut up and behave.