Brain Fart Thoughts

Photo by Hamid Rastin on Unsplash

This brain fart feels like the 50-lane highway in Beijing attempting to squeeze down to just four lanes — or in this case, just one. There are many untied, floating threads up here this morning, and they’re all jostling for attention, begging to be pinned down by typed words.

It’s a bit of analysis paralysis attempting to focus on just one, so I suppose I’ll do the next best thing and download them from my neocortex onto what you’re reading right now. The thought of pursuing one of these ideas in depth seems a little onerous right now, so we’ll take the breadth-not-depth approach.

So, here we go: A list of things I’m musing right now:

• Metacognition: Fascinated by thinking about thinking. More intrigued by meta-decisions. How do we think about how we decide? There’s a great book about decision-making (How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices by Annie Duke) that I’d read recently, and it was indeed full of good questions to ask oneself when on the precipice of a decision. But how do we go a step further and think about the ways we decide? How do we know whether to trust logic or intuition more? How do we know what we know?
• (TW: Suicide): A friend wrote suicide notes to their family and friends recently, including me. One of the notes was found. Thankfully, they are getting help and on the road of healing. I talk to them a few times a year and randomly decided to give them a call yesterday, and their raw rendition of their experience hit me like a train. They are one of the most encouraging, supportive, and loving people I know. I wish they saw their beauty in themselves. Choppy sentences here because I wish their pain didn’t exist for them and I just want to give them a giant hug. Soon.
• Synechdoche, New York: I was reading a reddit thread about Being John Malkovich this morning which got me thinking about Philip Seymour Hoffman’s movie, S,NY. There’s something also raw and haunting about S,NY — I can’t recall the movie details but rather the feeling that it evoked when I watched it last fall, and want to dive into it again. I rewatched Garden State last night and picked up on so many nuances that I’d missed as a teenager. Imagine the treasure trove of details that movies house — I bet some get highlighted to us when our own experiences relevantly draw them out. It’s like watching a new movie every time. Main point: watch S,NY if you get the chance. You won’t regret it.
• And we’re back! I took a break from writing and now all the thought trains I had have disappeared into a remote forest. I’m focused on getting to my kettlebell workout, and the only thing standing between me and said workout is finishing this daily piece. So I leave you with a piece of peace. Haha!