So I’ve been told before that I am wishy-washy, that I change my mind a lot and lately I have even recognized that in myself which led me to think about why people think I am that way and why I look at it in an entirely different light.
I have decided that I am not wishy washy and I don’t change my mind a lot. What I do is “brainstorm” out loud. That’s right. My mind multi tasks constantly. I jump from thought to thought just as when talking to me I sometimes jump from subject to subject. This is not to keep you confused and baffled at how I go from talking about one thing and end up on an entirely different subject. What happens is that when I start to think and talk and I say what comes to my mind it’s a jumbled mess of creativity that makes perfect sense to me but maybe not to those around me. And depending on your personality, you can find it annoying or charming. Luckily, Joe finds it charming.
Its not a matter of changing my mind you see. Its speaking out loud all my options and then figuring out at some point which one to go with. Let me give you an example. Yesterday while grocery shopping I told Joe that I was gonna get some green peppers and make stuffed peppers for dinner. Then I told him to get hamburger buns and taco shells. So while he’s left trying to figure out why I need hamburger buns and taco shells for a supper of stuffed green peppers I have brainstormed other menu ideas from the thought of buying hamburger meat for the peppers. I have jumped from stuffed peppers to taco salad to manwiches. I start spouting out ingredients that I need and he’s still bagging the peppers. To him it may seem that I am changing my mind about what to have for supper. I’m not. I am merely brainstorming out loud other meals for the week.
Slowly I am beginning to understand how it affects the people around me though that I have this “quirk” of thinking out loud and at a break neck pace. Today I may say we are thinking of moving to Vinita and tomorrow we may be thinking of moving to Texas and then we actually wind up in Tulsa. The thing is, all those other options were just that. Options that were spoken outloud. Not decisions that were made that I changed my mind on. When I say next weekend we may go to Branson and then the weekend comes and we go to Kingfisher instead its not that I changed my mind. Its that somewhere in the course of brainstorming what I want to do I spoke the possibilities out loud and then one by one figured out which ones to eliminate until the real decision is made. What I failed to realize is that sometimes I can disappoint and hurt people with what seems to be a fact spoken aloud and taken to heart.
Now all that being said, I think one of my strongest assets is that I can be counted on to do what I say I will do. That is once I have committed to myself and others that that is what I’m gonna do. If I say we might do this, or we are planning to do this, you might want to wait a bit until my mind stops brainstorming all the possibilities and I say I will be there. Or I will do this for you. Then barring some unforeseen disaster or health issue you can count on me.
I had a plaque on my desk that read “creative minds are rarely tidy”. That fit me to a tee. But not just in the sense that sometimes on the outside my desk looked unorganized and chaotic. But internally. My mind is rarely tidy. No one would ever accuse me of having a one track mind. It’s always jumping around, thinking up new ideas, making new plans, setting new goals…..
In a fast paced world where decisions sometimes have to be made very quickly, I think that my “talent” for thinking of a bunch of possibilities at the same time and pulling a decision out from that “chaos” is pretty valuable. I don’t mull things over for days. I don’t really need a lot of time to think things over. By the time a thought comes out of my mouth I have pretty much ran the pros and cons in my brain. Sometimes, it’s a little exhausting.
I used to sleep with a pad of paper next to my bed because my mind never seemed to shut down. I’d wake up in the middle of the night with the best idea for a comedy bit or a gift for a friend, etc. and write it down so I wouldn’t lose the thought. I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep. Some of my best writings were done in the middle of the night. That would have been ok had I been a writer by vocation and not on a time schedule. But working 8-5 I had to force myself to shut down the thoughts and sleep.
Losing my job has made my hyperactive mind even more so because I now have a lot of time on my hands to think. And since there is no outlet other than Joe at the moment he is learning very quickly how to separate the bits and pieces of “stuff” I say out loud into the “mulling over pile and the really want pile”. He’s a trooper.
And so…..I want to say to those who have been disappointed or hurt by a decision I made because I had talked about doing something else and it turned out not to be what I did, I am sorry.
Sometimes silence is golden and I’m learning to keep my mouth shut at least part of the time. A wise friend once told me to “say ½ of what comes to mind” and you won’t talk so much. Maybe its time to try that again. A lot less confusing for those around me….though I think that my brain might explode.
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