Perpetual Motion

My mind is in perpetual motion. A hamster on a wheel. A tornado. The only way to stop it, or at least funnel off some of the crazy, is to write. Getting the thoughts out of my head at least ends the endless repetition of one train of thought and makes room for another. Writing lets my brain move forward instead of turning into a black hole that feeds on itself, swirling and sucking everything in with its gravity.

I’m not always serious. On the outside I can be fun, and on the inside too. But I feel like my thoughts are grave or deep or big too often. It’s more fun being fun. Fortunately for myself, I think I’m hilarious. I think lots of things are hilarious, too. I spoke to our son on the phone when I was in New Orleans, and he said something that made me laugh.

“You’re funny, buddy,” I said. I sat on the stone wall and giggled at my 11 year-old.

With his father’s dryness, he said, “It’s just easy to make you laugh.”

Which is apparently why my husband married me. I’m an easy laugh.

Perpetual motion is my energy state. I wrote recently about not being able to loaf. It’s because I like to be busy. Thinking is included in that busyness. Like most, I am not able to sit still and be thought-free. But it is rare that I sit and think — I’m writing, or making coffee, or walking, or planning my week. Those are probably the slowest motion things I do besides sleep. I’m trying to recall if there was a single moment today where I was not doing something, and aside from sleeping, I cannot think of one. Oh, except when I woke this morning.

That is my still time. Waking on a Saturday or Sunday without an alarm clock. Lying in bed with my husband, my head on his chest, half-asleep, not moving. Content.

For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Trying to get back into the writing habit. Thank you to Geoffrey for the “perpetual motion” prompt.