Stream of Consciousness
A glimpse into my simmering thoughts
Do you ever think about or quantify what goes through your mind over the course of just a couple of minutes? It can be a wild, random, strange, unfocused collection of ideas and non-sequiturs.
Through the coffee shop window
I am currently sitting in a coffee shop wondering what the people who just drove past the window exiting the drive-thru ordered. I’m wondering why there is a kid with a trash-bag-style poncho riding his bike outside? It is cold. Maybe he’s using it to cut the feel of the icy wind. The person across from me has AirPods in, mine are sort of broken, one makes a horrible staticky noise whenever I try to talk to someone on the phone, so I can only use the left one - not sure what to do about that. What would it be like to be a barista? I should really figure out what it is that I want to write about this week, but my thoughts are all over the place (clearly!). Maybe I’ll just keep writing about that - my all-over-the-place thoughts. Do I want to write an “In It” post and talk about what it feels like to have a new job on the horizon? Not really, no. That line, “Not really, no” is from my one of my very favorite movies, Chocolat. The sermon that the priest gives at the end feels like my manifesto for life:
“I am not sure what the theme of my homily today ought to be. Do I want to speak of the miracle of our divine Lord’s transformation? Not really, no. I don’t want to talk about his divinity. I’d rather talk about his humanity. I mean, you know, how he lived his life here on earth - his kindness, his tolerance. Listen, here’s what I think. I think we can’t go ‘round measuring our goodness by what we don’t do, by what we deny ourselves, by what we resist and who we exclude. I think we’ve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create and who we include.”
Not yet
I do want to write about embarking on a new adventure with my career, but not quite yet. I have background U.S. election stress. That shouldn’t be normal. I received an email a few weeks ago from my meditation app saying “Support your loved ones through election season.” As a marketer, I thought - that’s smart, then I caught myself thinking, “Wow! Our contemporary situation is such that an election has individuals, the country and the globe in a state of fearful anticipation. That doesn’t feel normal nor is it healthy. It makes me mad, but anger around it isn’t productive. I don’t know how to manage that so it sits, like a physical presence in the background as Nov. 5 inches closer.
Parenting right now
I’m feeling the emotional swings of my kids this week. My oldest has been especially volatile and it’s hard to figure out what’s going on. He can’t articulate it and feels frustrated not knowing, having to sit with the feeling that he is going to explode. Was I like that as a kid - really big, intense emotions that I didn’t know what to do with? Maybe. Probably. I can’t remember. Why can’t we remember details of feelings when we were young? I can remember individual moments that were hard, but it feels like I have some sort of weird fog when I try to remember certain things, and the feelings, thoughts or situations get compressed into general categories, all seen through a retrospective lens of a 45 year old. I could ask my parents - would they remember the nuances, the details of how I was as a kid? Why haven’t I asked them? I don’t know if I would remember the details of my kids even just 5 years ago. So I haven’t asked them. I know we can’t remember everything, but I sometimes feel like I forget the big things or I remember them more positively or differently than how they actually occurred. Maybe there is some sort of self-preservation in that, like how we don’t remember childbirth in such a way that prevents us from considering another child, or the way that we run a marathon after completing one and vowing never to do that again. Interesting.
Future posts - what should I develop?
I have a lot of half-baked posts. Ideas about what to write that I haven’t taken time to flesh out:
Can you pass on quirks? Here’s an example. I feel a strange protectiveness for electronic objects. I feel sad when my husband gets mad at technology not working, as if the computer somehow feels badly about his frustration. My son exhibited a hint of this recently - attaching human feelings to inanimate objects. Did he get that from me? Some sort of inherited or learned behavior? Weird.
The value of made up words. There are so many times when I don’t have quite the word to express my meaning, but what if we made a word up to capture exactly that? My kids have coined a few that work so well I think they belong in our mainstream lexicon: Gription (Grip + traction) Conattach (connect + attach) Cizzamon (the feeling you get when you eat a spicy cinnamon candy).
I keep getting stung by bees - well, I was stung twice in as many weeks. And I seem to get stung when the bee gets trapped. It makes sense. It also hurts. One flew down my t-shirt while I was mountain biking, and my hip pack blocked its egress. It stung me on the back. Another got stuck between my pant leg and sock when I was hiking, stinging me on the ankle. This is always how I get stung. In previous years, I have had wasps get stuck in the leg of my gardening pants and stepped on them in the grass. While I don’t think the universe is telling me anything with this, the way I get stung has me thinking…How might we, as humans, sting when we feel trapped?
How something baffling becomes clear just in time. There are moments in life when you suddenly have to figure something out that has felt elusive, complex or unknowable. An example for me was my kids’ car seats - the kind with the base and the bucket. I had rarely taken care of and never transported infants prior to having my own, and I couldn’t figure out how the car seat bucket system worked. It was a total mystery until we finally had a newborn and had to take him home from the hospital. In that moment, it suddenly made sense. I know, random.
I’ve never tried a poll before, and given the half-baked thoughts I’ve shared above, I’d love to hear if any of them resonate? Any that I should think about more deeply to share what I notice?
Thanks for weighing in. I’d love to write more about what you find interesting. Something I find fascinating is reading about the process of other writers. It can be unexpected and surprising and a beautiful way to connect to the humanness of others in their creative pursuit. I once read about how
listens to heavy metal songs on repeat when she writes (if you’ve yet to check out her Substack, I highly recommend it!) That was a cool insight that made me feel like I knew her better. I feel this when I read memoirs, as if I am closer to understanding who the person is behind the pages ( is a great example). I am currently reading Dave Eggers book, A Heartbreaking work of Staggering Genius. It’s incredibly personal and the way he writes to the reader in the beginning of the book offers a glimpse into who he is. It’s quirky, funny, real, perplexing. Substack feels like this as a platform, one that lends itself to getting to know writers more personally through posts, notes, chats and the fact that authors & subscribers have control over how that interaction takes place. This platform gives readers a chance to follow along with writers, read what they are thinking about, how they are thinking about it and to experience their evolution. It’s a pretty cool community and feels like a special way to know people you may not otherwise have the chance to meet.So I have lifted the lid of my brain in this moment and let you look into the pot - a stew simmering with a bunch of stuff. And that’s it for this week. The “Everything. All of it.” that I am thinking about at this particular moment in Starbucks.
‘Till next time, thanks for being here.