Foolishness

How have I only done one post this month? I've been writing up a slurry of things - seems like some of it should have wound up on my blog space. In addition to the "important" things I've been working on - more on that later- I've been thinking about two things. 

1.) My tendency to have conversations with myself out loud as though I'm not alone in a room.

2.) People describing me as a calm person. 

I'll start with the former. Every morning I sit with my cup of tea and I say my prayers. These I say internally, so you'd never know I was working up any sentences. Towards the end of my prayer time, my thoughts descend into lunacy and I wind up on a tangent that God probably tunes out because there are no direct requests or notes of gratitude involved. I imagine he mutes himself and takes another call because I forgot to hang up and he's much too loving to ever hang up first. 
While he helps another person with their real problems, my train of thought on Ellen having a healthy baby will lead to an indictment against excessive human breeding without preconsidering the many obstacles. "What do you mean?" I ask myself internally. But at some point I answer out loud, as though I'm being interviewed. When I realized I'm being interviewed, I have to turn on the charm, you know, for the audience, and before I know it I'm telling a riotous story from the college years as though there is someone else in the room with me. 

While I don't think this is normal behavior, I don't worry that I'm alone on this one. That being said, I've always been over confident in the relatability of my human experience. If I think and feel it, surely everyone else does. However, I am often told I'm strange, so maybe I should worry. Somedays my prayers turn into a job interview (I always nail 'em), the retelling of a classic Union story, sometimes I'm working out a complicated political system (helps to say it out loud) and other times I'm a featured guest on The Graham Norton Show. 
Today my prayers turned into the larger question of why I so frequently have audible discussions with myself. I offered many reasons: verbalizing leads to articulation, because no one else will talk to me, a lifelong fondness for interview shows, and because it helps to keep your thought train on its tracks. Your mind can't wander as far when you can hear the mania in real time.

Enough about that. Number 2. 

I am frequently accused of being calm, which mostly delights my but occasionally I feel like a real con artist. "You're so serene," a coffeeshop girl will tell me. "You have a soothing aura," a hairdresser stated. "Love your chill vibe," said a girl with a lip ring. 

"You see Laura there," a teacher once said to the class, "She'll be great with high pressure clients because she's so calm." I took their words with great pride and also hoped I'd never have high pressure clients.
I sure am a calm person on the outside, but it's just a mask I wear to try to fool my insides. Inside, clowns are doing cartwheels, bombs go off in morse code patterns, and there's water rushing from somewhere. A red alert alarm rings in my ear all day. "What was that sharp pain my chest? Is that car listing towards me? I think I sent those tourists in the wrong direction."

It's that the reaction part of my brain is calibrated all wrong. I'll really panic when things aren't so bad, like running late for a meeting or accidentally insulting someone. Oh my mind explodes with worry. My mood sours, my patience wanes, my heart beats up in my ears. My ability to perform simple tasks crumbles beneath my steadfast thumbs. 
But when something goes very wrong; medical emergencies, dog fights, or flower shipments that don't arrive, I loop back around to being a zen master. 

Below is a chart I've made of Big Lue's Reaction Calibration

Sure, I glide down the sidewalk with no reaction to the world around me. But that's because if I react, my brain will go into a true panicked state. It's like living with a nervous toddler narrating my consciousness. I've had to develop a second stoic-adult-consciousness to reassure the first one.  I must deny the toddler. If I give in even a little, I'll drown. 

It's like that time Ellen and I were on that winding bus in Budapest, both on the verge of blowing chunks. If I sat still and focused, I could make it through. Ellen however prefers to release her anxiety steam by narrating the very catastrophe before our eyes. I don't suppose there is a correct way to handle your problems, but no one ever calls Ellen calm.  

Anyways, here are a few silly pictures from Thanksgiving at Gigs n' Big Dave's.