Quieting the conversation

Part 1 of the no diet diet involves food. Part 2 involved my brain. I'm a talker, though you wouldn't know it by talking to me. In real life I'm quiet, I'm a listening, I'm foliage. But in my mind I NEVER shut up.

Literally. Never.

I am always engaged in a conversation in my head. Granted oftentimes it's between two characters I'm writing about - the acceptable form of psychotic that's called being a working writer. But a lot of the other times, I'm in that endless loop of "And another thing...!" that we all [or maybe some of us?] do all the time. We [hopefully it's not just me] finish arguments in our heads, win them, trump our opponents and leave them wimpering in the proverbial dust. We rehearse conversations and sometimes just say the things we should say out loud to people but we know it will hurt them, cause a fight, make us look petty, result in nothing changing or everything changing in a way we don't want them to so we remain silent and have the conversation in our heads so it can go the way we want it to go.

This is why I miss exits on the highway and why I forget to take vitamins every day. My mind is elsewhere. I'm having conversations I'm going to have later, conversations I'm never going to have, conversations I had and conversations I should have had. All in my head, all the time. It's exhausting.

So my next project is to STOP the madness. I've turned off the ALL TALK channel in my head. It is NOT easy.

Zen is about clearing the mind, clearing the clutter from our lives. So while I plan to start once again tackling the physical clutter, my chief objective is to tackle the mental clutter.

I heretofore pledge that I will SHUT UP. I will not engage in the conversations in my head that make me angry, self-righteous or distract me from what's in front of me. I will work diligently to quiet my rampaging mind. This means I may blog more, because there might be things I just HAVE to say, but I won't be talking to the people in my head anymore, unless they are fictional characters whose words will be put on paper. No more dress rehearsal conversations, no more decade long arguments with people who are long gone or people who should be long gone. No more constant monologue about any subject just to keep me busy while I'm driving, sitting, sleeping.

It's all about quiet. The conversation is OVER.