A bit over a week ago I guess, I woke up here at the new Walkabout Manor during the move-in process, which meant a fitful night on the air mattress while we waited for the trailer with most of our belongings to get delivered. Whether this had anything to do with it or not, I arose quite anxious, because I was acutely aware that I had to change the address on my business cards and get more ordered. This was important, or so my sleep-addled brain told me, and it forced me from a drowsy no-rush-on-anything state into full wakefulness because I had to get right on this.
Now, bear in mind that I give away one or two business cards a month at best, and haven’t even started soliciting new photo students within the area we now reside, mush less arranged for a gallery display or anything – getting new business cards is well down the list of things that Need To Be Done. I mean, can I even get Walkabout Studios set up first? But for reasons unknown, my brain chose to fixate on that with enough emphasis to force me awake and ready to jump on the computer. Granted, I have, what, eleven different card designs?, that all need to be changed, so it’s a longer task than you might have thought, but not that long, and not at all crucial.
[“Eleven? Al, what the hell?” you say, but they’re all different photo images, and I print a variety of them on each photo page and cut them apart myself, so at any given time the recipient gets a random choice.]
On the same day I ran across this post from The Bloggess, a neat coincidence. Not exactly the same thing, but likely the same effect, which is one’s brain attaching random importance and/or emotional reaction to some particular concept while we’re in that stage between sleep and awake. Most everyone is familiar with having some brilliant idea in that stage and then struggling to remember it afterward, in some cases actually writing it down only to find that it makes no sense in the light of day. Occasionally, it actually is an insight, but more often I think (at least in my experience,) it’s simply nonsense – it’s got nothing to do with the thought itself, only how the brain interprets it, which in that sleep state might be entirely random.
I sometimes wonder about the peculiar workings of the brain, especially because I’m prone to entering the free-association period as I’m falling asleep, following some particular line of thought until I suddenly realize that it makes no sense; the spacing of the lines on the roads have no relation whatsoever to donkeys, or some such rot. It’s bad enough that we can associate wildly disparate items because of some past experience, like that time we watched Krull while eating lime jello, but then our brains can make associations for no apparent reasons at times – and worse, the same brain wastes its time trying to figure out why. And now I have a memory of being anxious over the address on my business cards, when I know it’s totally inconsequential, but am I going to be able to selectively delete it and free up space for, like, the new neighbor’s names? Noooo…