funny how the brain wanders

Funny how the brain wanders. Usually when I’m at the store or going to bed I think of all sorts of things I need to write or rant about. And when I sit down, I stare at my diary… blank page… no idea what to say.

A brilliant woman in my office once said about my boss, “Her brain is like a popcorn popper – you have to catch the thought while it is in the air.” (and I do mean this woman is brilliant, if I could work directly under her or with her all the time, I would in a heartbeat).

And I guess all of our thoughts are like that — they float to the surface, come to mind, and then sink back down. One friend once described it as a mental stew. (Wow, that must have been 10 years ago and I just remembered it… cool!)

There are several questions that I hate being asked. One of the top ones is “what do you do for fun.” Well, let’s go over what I don’t do first, since what I don’t do is primarily what they are looking for:
1. I don’t drink alcohol.
2. I don’t party.
3. I don’t like large crowds.
4. I don’t “hang out.”
5.I don’t go clubbing.
6. I don’t dance unless its ‘real’ dancing.
6. I’m not athletic.
7. I don’t play sports.
8. I don’t have money to go shopping a lot.
9. I don’t have kids, so cut out all of those activities.
10. I keep the Sabbath, so anything on Friday night to Saturday sun-down is out.
So what does that leave? I read, watch movies, day-dream a lot. I clean house, proof-read my husbands school papers. I try and think up ways to save money without giving anything up. I ponder my beliefs and philosophize to myself. I talk on the phone. I write in this diary. I watch TV. I like to sleep. I sometimes freeze on the spot, as if my mind is so stuck on a train of thought that my body forgets to move… I try to not let that happen in public. (Maybe that’s why I’m so quiet around people. I’m only half-listening, the rest of the time I’m in my own world.) Or I could be thinking of all the awful disasters that could happen to me, my husband, my family, both of us, all of us, etc (usually involving a horrific death and the subsequent mourning and newspaper/news articles).

I am just not a people person if you don’t know me. And that’s not the best career-focuses personality to have… then again, I’ve never wanted a career, so there you go. No, I’d rather be by myself, doing my own thing. When I’m on my own, there is no sound. If there is, it is only there to drown out the creakings of the floor, the AC, or the wind against the windows so I don’t paralyze myself with fear. No, I am fully comfortable with remaining completely silent. I like silence. I have a lot going on inside my head – talking is pointless.

Maybe that’s why I so precise when I explain something. I don’t want to waste time, and I hate explaining something twice. I also like to cover all ground possible because I want the person to whom I am explaining this to be comfortable with taking the initiative to guess how far you can take this concept, or expand it. (Like, if the pot to cook pasta in is highly insulated and spreads heat well, how you adjust the cooking temperature for some foods would mean that you adjust the temperature for other pots made out of the same material).

I’m one of those people who will play with something to figure it out. We use SAP at work as our main system for, well, everything. When I started my job, I’d never seen it before and had to be trained on everything. However, once you get the hang of it, and once you see how a couple of things work, you learn how its logic works and work with the capability. The type of features and reporting that you can pull from it is awesome — and I’ve barely scratched the surface in reporting, etc. However, a lot of what I do, I learned from playing with the system… trying new things, seeing if it could work, etc. I don’t understand how people cannot think like that, much less be willing to try something like that. How do you know broaden your horizons and see for yourself? How can you be content with “I don’t know, I’ve never tried”?

Ok, that’s all for tonight.