That Scattered Brain of Yours: Part 1
August 21st, 2005
Taking a peep into my head last night:
I should water the plants. Oh, and I need to start composting my kitchen waste. How do I do that? Isn’t there some brewgroup bucket thing that I saw. Which reminds me, I need to buy more coffee, and a grinder… Yeah a Zassenhaus grinder. Man I wish I could afford a Rancilio Rocky, but I need to take care of my Chase situation and get my finances in order… That’ll take a while, should I use Quickent or GnuCash or KMyMoney or Moneydance or Excel or OpenOffice or a Dome budget book. Oh… what is this watering can in my hand for?? I’m such a scatterbrain.
Where did all of these responsibilities cluttering up my head come from? I’ll save looking at the origin of the sense of responsibility as I often take it to mean, which is responsibility to the past. What I would like to examine now is the concept of responsibility to ordering one’s perception of the now. Ok that looks weird there on the screen, but stick with it for a sec. All of those thoughts running through my head last night, or at any given moment, are just a lavaflow of memories and selfish regret. My example above is superficial, but the same branching thoughts can overwhelm me with feelings of anxiety or shame or paranoia or hate or neurosis Z.
All of those thoughts, fears, etc. are within me (perhaps within you, I don’t know you have to ask yourself that not me). At the point of the very feeling of “Hey I want that” or “I need to take care of this” one needs to take a deep look at that feeling. In the jargon of the GTD cult this could perhaps be called determining the next action, but it is really much deeper than that. What if the thought itself is meaningless? What if it is nothing but unfounded negativity? I cannot shy away from those thoughts, but I don’t want to be overcome by them.
Coming in That Scattered Brain of Yours: Part 2 - How can I deal with my life? Perhaps by looking where I’m not looking?