Have Mind. Will Travel

I wonder what it’s like to be present and aware all the time. I honestly wouldn’t know. My mind has a ridiculously short attention span. It wanders off at a moment’s notice with little encouragement. It just goes, and the rest of me must stay on task in the mean time. I could be driving, or cooking, or working at a job, or showering, any number of things while I’m conscious of a completely different place and time, and I’m speaking and thinking for fictitious people who are not me.

The constant multitasking can be irritating to the people who have to interact with me. I try to be present for others to the best of my abilities, especially when I’m getting paid to do so, but I don’t always succeed. My husband bears the brunt of it, but he likes my writing, so his understanding has increased. After a decade of marriage, I assume he’s gotten used to it by now and has lowered his expectations about my undivided attention accordingly.

The problem is that I like being someplace else. There’s so much going on, and I’m in control of it, unlike reality. I don’t feel in control of my own life most of the time. In reality I’m usually just hanging on and trying to appreciate what I’ve been given in the time I have. In the other place (or places) that occupy my mind, I have a better feel of direction and purpose. There, I get to make sense of the senseless. I get to expose hidden motives to the insanity going on in whatever drama I have chosen to occupy my time with.

In a nutshell, reality is overwhelming. An overactive imagination is liberating.

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