My Brain Won't Shut Up

No, I’m not talking about voices in my head telling me to do things.  Don't worry, I'm more-or-less sane.

I just have this constant inner "monologue" happening.  Sometimes it’s actually words, but others it's music, or some combination of things.  But regardless of what it is, it’s always going, and this can occasionally become quite annoying.

I mean, just about everyone gets songs stuck in their heads.  But most people I know don’t have to sit there and feel the muscles in their arms and hands twitching as they “play” along with the song (one of the curses of being a musician).  I have literally spent entire nights lying awake, unable to fall asleep because I can’t stop twitching along with the song in my head.  This is made even worse when I only get some fractured fragment of the music that doesn’t logically begin or end, just cycles on awkwardly…forever.

This can be problematic when doing something that requires real focus though.  Like driving.  I very often have to turn on the radio, because the only way to get rid of the insistent song fragments in my brain is to just drown them out with another song.

Also, I know that the brain does a lot of thinking behind the scenes, but mine seems incapable of maintaining that boundary.  Especially with math and science related topics.  I spend more time than I care to admit unable to focus on my homework because my brain is still fixated on a problem from two weeks ago.  

Or it’ll decide that 4:32 a.m. is a fantastic time to try and figure out how the time travel in Back to the Future somehow worked without destroying all of reality, freak out about what to do with my life, or why Tolkien thought his deus ex machina eagles were a good idea.

These are important questions, okay?  Even if they do temporarily ruin my suspension of disbelief...

But the really strange thing is that, when my brain finally does shut up, it’s decidedly disconcerting.  I’ve had all this racket happening in my mind, either playing music or deriving some equation or something else, and suddenly it’s gone.  You’d think that’d be pleasant, but really it just leaves this weird, empty swirling nothingness that I don’t particularly like.  

I wonder if maybe it’s like when you’re around a loud noise for a long time, and it finally stops but you still have that weird feeling of sound in your ears.  You’ve experienced it for so long, your mind doesn’t seem to quite know what to do without it.

Anyway.  I know I can't be the the only person who's mind wants their constant attention.  The brain is a fascinating thing, and even though everyone's works differently, there tend to be some common themes.

Like a mind that just never shuts up.