Daily prompt: Simply the best

Tags

postaday2014, thinking, thoughts, writing

When and where do you do your best thinking? In the bathroom? While running? Just before bed, or first thing in the morning? On the bus? Why do you think that is?

Now I have Tina Turner’s gorgeous voice stuck in my head, she is belting out “You’re Simply The Best, better than all the rest”. She will be singing in my head for probably hours to come, I am not complaining, it could be far worse. I love Tina Turner, she has gumption plus the best legs and what a terrific dancer.

Anyway, my best time for thinking is definitely in the morning hours when my brain is both fresh and refreshed. I just typed the word fresh twice and it suddenly has lost all recognizability for me, has that ever happened to you? You write down a word that you have seen and used a million times and all of a sudden, it loses all familiarity. It has happened to me before, very rarely, but it throws me for a loop. LOL I am writing this past the morning hour span of fresh thinking, maybe that explains it.

Getting back to when I think the best, apart from the morning hours during breakfast time, I also love to think while walking Jack. I run all kinds of scenarios in my head while we walk very quickly around the mile loop and by the time that we get back home, everything that I had thought about has disappeared in the many footsteps of our walk. Sometimes, something good sticks and I write about it later on, but that is not too often.

I think myself to sleep very easily. Sleep for me is a no brainer, I close my eyes and think of something, anything and I’m asleep. What is nice is that sometimes, my thoughts become dreams or what has bothered me gets woven into my dreams and somehow gets resolved some way or the other and I feel better even if I don’t know exactly why.

But really when does a person ever stop thinking? Part of what scares me about no longer being here, is the idea that my brain won’t be on anymore and my thoughts will be gone, like a lightbulb shut off forever. I can’t even imagine it, because my mind or brain doesn’t know how to shut off while I am conscious. That is what scared me when I was five years old and realizing that one day I was not going to wake up and I was not going to be anymore, that it was going to be something more than darkness, it was going to be nothingness.

Okay I went dark there, I am turning back to cheerier thoughts, one of my favorite things to think about is food and specifically planning desserts, which one to make, how much to make of it and who will like it. Things like that make me quite happy and I can spend tons of time thinking about cooking and baking, gardening and writing as well.

Constantly what is on my mind with the thinking thing is what will I write about and what do I need to learn about New York that will help me with my book. These are thoughts that occupy me and keep my creative juices percolating. All in all I think that this was a relatively interesting prompt to write about, thanks Daily Prompt people for a nice idea.

Daily prompt: Moment of clarity

Tags

breathing, calm, postaday2013, thinking

Tell us about a time you’d been trying to solve a knotty problem — maybe it was an interpersonal problem, a life problem, a big ol’ problem — and you had a moment of clarity when the solution appeared to you, as though you were struck by lightening.

The main thing that this prompt brings to mind is that no matter what kind of problem may have presented itself to me, as long as my mind was racing, solutions weren’t coming. It has always been my experience that as soon as I calmed my mind, that was when I could find a way to solve whatever headache or trouble was plaguing me at the moment.

It works for any kind of problem, I vaguely remember dealing with logistical problems the many, many times that we moved and it was only when I took deep breaths and thought about the problem as a puzzle that it loosened up my thinking and the solutions most often came along fairly easily.

This realization took awhile for me to figure out, I always found solutions when I was younger, but the costs were headaches, stomach problems, frayed nerves and restless nights. As I got older and gained life experience, my eyes opened up to the possibility that it doesn’t have to be so hard. A lot of the hardship is in the mind, because mostly through fear and insecurity, I amplified the issues and the consequences. When I would tackle whatever was on my plate calmly and head on, that was when I saw that it wasn’t as horrible as I thought that it was going to be, I had stressed myself into a panic for the wrong reasons.

I can’t be more specific because I can’t remember much of the troubles that I have gone through, not enough to go into interesting detail, I only remember the lessons that I have learned along the road. Don’t rush into much of anything, take a minute to breath and calm your mind. Remember that putting things off does not make them easier to deal with, running away never makes the issue go away and nothing is impossible to overcome. I’m not saying that it won’t be difficult or painful, but it can be overcome.

Breathing is good, calm and peace are wonderful and you are your own best friend.

Where did inspiration hit?

Tags

introspection, memory, postaday2012, thinking, walking, writing

Nowadays I have to be careful where inspiration can hit me because if it's far away from my computer or any sort of writing paper; that sudden flash of inspiration might as well have never happened because with my memory failing me, the flash rapidly transforms into a DUD, no BAM for me.

I often get inspired during my walks throughout the day, I wonder if it's the increased circulation and blood pumping throughout my veins and arteries that inspire such flashes, sadly these flashes sometimes dissipate into the ether as I get closer to home or as soon as I walk into the door. Maybe it's the decrease in blood flow that erases what memory I had of the idea, I don't know. I used to have flashes of creativity in the car while driving but that hasn't happened in a while, nowadays I concentrate on where I'm going and paying attention while I am getting there. There have been too many times that I have arrived to my destination and I couldn't remember how I got there because I was busy thinking of everything other than driving. That is most definitely not a good thing to be doing while you are driving a motorized potential weapon. So I limit my bursts of creative thinking to the safety of my walking routes.