Diary of an over thinker

I realised that I think too much. Thinking, in small doses, is a pleasant sort of activity. Here one employs one’s mind objectively in order to form an opinion or evaluate a situation. This is rational behaviour and under no circumstance should it be condemned. 

The problem arises when one’s thoughts, sort of, go on an over-drive where instead of reaching reasonable conclusions, one reaches inconclusive dead ends. For want of a better term, I call such people over thinkers, and to my utter surprise I found myself fitting into this category. 

To correct this bit of irrationality, and before it developed into a habit, I decided to write a diary. Putting my thoughts, frenzied, jumbled up and all several of them, on paper, could help me train myself. To think in a crystal clear manner, that is. 

Not finding a conventional diary at hand, I put a writing pad that I had pinched from a five-star hotel, and a pencil on my bedside table. At various intervals throughout the day I made hasty entries on it. Neither my domestic staff, nor my immediate family members could understand why I needed to trudge back to my room every few hours and scribble something into a book. Raised eyebrows and strange looks were thrown in my direction, but I ignored them all. 

Training needs discipline, and to train something as intangible as one’s own over thinking, required more strictness. My first entry of the day read: “woke up to troubled thoughts”. I was tempted to describe those troublesome apprehensions, but I stopped myself and left it at that. There was a niggling feeling that tried to pull me back to the notepaper but I snapped out of it, literally and figuratively. 

Subsequently, I kept jotting down my numerous activities during the day. The accompanying mental commotion also, which was going on in my brain, I wrote down in a concise method, without going into too much of detail. 

Opening my diary late at night I was pleased with my self-discipline. I was cured of over thinking I thought. One day is all it took. I was so happy with this discovery, that I invited my husband to peruse my day’s writings. 

“Burnt the cake,” he read out in a clear voice. 

“Slightly singed,” I corrected him. 

“Fought with the gardener,” he continued.

“Yes, I fired him today,” I said. 

“Why?” my spouse was curious.

“He beat up his wife,” I explained. 

“Ah that is terrible!” he exclaimed.

“Go on,” I prompted.

“There was a missed call on the phone at noontime,” he stated. 

I tried desperately to hold onto my wayward thoughts and did not answer for a few moments. In retrospect, I remember I even took a deep breath to calm myself down. And then the dam burst. 

“Gosh! Where was the call from? Why did the name not show up along with the number? Who was trying to get in touch with me? Maybe it was something important, a life or death situation? If it was so imperative, the caller would have called back, in fact he should have called back. Perhaps I should have dialed the number? What if it went into an answering machine? It could also be possible that one of my friends’ relative was trying to contact me, could they be in trouble? Dear God, please let them be safe,” I babbled. 

The more things change the more they stay the same?