Monkey Mind

We're always pacing
and scanning the horizon
for the next big thing

Here's the thing. I have a gypsy mind/soul. Which is fancy way of saying that I have a blazing case of untreated adult ADD. I embrace it. It's mine. In the library the other day (could have been any day, I'm in there almost every day) I saw a book on the "Featured" shelf with the title "Embracing Your Adult ADD". I thought, "Oh, interesting. I'll just pop over to the design books first and then I'll pick it up." I didn't pick it up. Non-fiction lately bores me, unless it has loads of pretty pictures or is a lightly veiled historical narrative about prostitutes in Fairbanks or something. Fiction's my slut, and she always has been. Or memoirs. As long as they're spicy.

My point (and there isn't one, really) is that this monkey-mind (a Buddhist term meaning "unsettled, restless, capricious, whimsical, indecisive, uncontrollable") of mine has gotten severely out of hand this past year. It could be all the tumult of our move up here, it could be that I'm 4,000 miles away from the tiny saplings that we planted down south (now growing without us), it could be that it's just who I am and we humans grow stronger into our personalities as we age.

Just as I've typed this I've also browsed sites on various subjects - just in this ten minutes. But I've also been having a conversation with my 5 year old son (5 year olds are the inventors of the monkey-mind - plus, his Chinese Astrological sign is guess what - Monkey). And I've also been brewing coffee and fantasising about the completion of a project I've been working on (getting close - despite my scattered work habits). But we all do this, don't we? I'd love to wax on that it's societal changes, technology changes, etc. But you know what? Even when I was a kid, living a fairly simple kid life (we didn't watch much tv, I played in my room and outside, outside and my room) I flitted from one thing to another. It's something I've noticed my son usually DOES NOT do. He focuses. His Playmobil villages and the stories that he invents take hours sometimes to play themselves out. I could focus, but on several things at once.

It's also just like this: I have no point today. I've been particularly scattered this weekend, my mind has been racing between two particular scenarios and I'm working something big out in my monkey-mind. It's working so fast I can't even attempt to write things down. In other words, I'm a hot mess. I'm scattered, smothered, and covered. There's also still snow on the ground, and as much as I love the winter and the snow - I'm done.