Posts tagged thinking

It appears I start a lot of my posts with such a statement these days. Hell, its the noise I make at the beginning of every one of my thoughts. Why? I used to think it was a pondering kind of noise, the kind you make when you’re deciding what to have for lunch or what shoes to where or whether to shout at the bastards outside your window for coming back to the accomodation drunk at three in the morning.

Now, I’m not so sure.

I’ve always been a ponderer. Even my friends noticed it; they’d snap their fingers in front of me as I stared off into the horizon of those weird, purple walls in the sixth-form common room. Everyone has those moments, I guess, where something that doesn’t even exist holds them rapt. But they happen a lot for me. I don’t know why. Maybe because I always find something in that middle distance to look at.

To all those who have seen me zone out in the middle of one of their conversations, I apologise. It wasn’t that you had nothing interesting to say, it certainly wasn’t that you bored me. Its just who I am. I am a thinker first and foremost. I’ve always considered my imagination my greatest asset, and sometimes it gets the better of me.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to put it to good use. For now, it really just serves as a distraction. I like my thoughts, don’t get me wrong - I even write them down occasionally and no-one is more surprised than I am for their contents. I just wished they wouldn’t ambush me on a walk out in the meadow, or at a meal with friends.

Its so difficult to explain that pondering noise and that vacant stare away.

As should be blatently obvious to everyone operating on GMT, I always seem to submit my posts at about one in the morning, or possibly earlier if Im feeling paticularly adevnturous or lucid. I’d like to think this is because I am at my most enlightened. Really, its just because I waste my entire bleedin’ day.

I spend my time on pointless games, pointless books or, worst of all, “think”. My technique of “thinking” involves jumping backwards and forwards around my room, generally throwing something about at the same time. This weird ritual, for some weird reason I’d love a psychologist to explain to me someday, allows me to descend in to whatever mental fantasy I like. And I do men “descend; I merge into these brief little constructions that can center around films, television shows, stories or computer games I’ve created in my head, future professions I see myself in, paths in life I’ve not taken, etc. etc. On the plus side, I maintain a ridculously vivid and surreal imagination (I once heard some one say on the subject of Avatar, “how does James Cameron come up with this stuff?” I briefly wondered if they were joking.) On the downside, its ruined my life.

Its not uncommon for me to spend hours of every day in these bouts of “thinking”. Time can seem to race past as I jump around in my reverie. What is more, its painfully addictive. I look up at the clock and think “just five more minutes of thinking and I’ll be done.” Which, as you can guess, is never the case. I have never spoken to anyone else who’s done this - its not exactly an easy subject to broach - but many people, mostly writers I suspect, would confess to having done something similiar. As a child. I feel like I’m playing a constant game of ‘the floor is made of lava’.

Well, this never bodes well for my academic work. Had I enough hours where I had absolutely nothing to do, essays might eventually work themselves out. But “thinking” always offers me something to do, so in between my other wasteful activities, I can imagine myself as the subject of the current novel I’m reading.

And the assignment just sits there. Boding.

Which leads me to why I write mostly late at night. It seems to be only in this perod, where I’m too exhausted to jump about, too mentally active to sleep. Here is when I generally write out my thoughts or ideas, but they rarely come to much. Its also when I do a fair number of my essays, hence the title of this post; I’ve just learnt an essay I haven’t done over the break may well have to be in for tomorrow. See above. But hell, I’m damn sure I’m not the first one in history to be late with an essay, and I generally get through everything eventually. Given that I’ve written all of this out in my current state shows I’m perfectly capable of reeling off a couple of thousand words.

I just wish I could do it at two in the afternoon.