Lately I've been listening to "Can't Stop Now" (lyrics here) on repeat, at least two dozen times in the last 3 days, because it's been firmly stuck in my head and I'm trying my old trick of "if you transcribe it, it will go away!" (More historically accurate: "if you arrange it for an a capella group, it will go away!" which is why sheet music for "Build Me Up Buttercup" mysteriously appeared outside Mark Penner's door after one evening during which I could not sleep.)

This is one of the few songs that I actually know the lyrics to, and the lyrics are also stuck in my head because they very nicely capture a feeling of perpetual motion caused by exhaustion. ("...and I'm too tired to stop...")

Some people say that if you don't know what to do, just start moving forward in some direction and you'll get more stimuli to figure out what direction you ought to be headed in. It's like charging forward on a wobbly unicycle; thrilling, requires your full attention in multiple directions at one time, needs concentration - it's basically really interesting constantly being on the brink of falling, and you just have to keep on pedaling forward because if you stop you're going to collapse. (Speaking of which, I would like to learn how to unicycle again someday.)

Similarly, it is an interesting way to live, although not necessarily the healthiest thing to keep up for extended periods of time (I do take breaks, so no worries on that front). It's times like this late at night when I'm writing that I become more conscious of how fast my flywheel's churning and how not-aware I've been of this all day.

Occasionally people can knock me out of this and make me sit down and be with them and focus without hyperfocusing; sometimes I can't get into the flow of things when this happens (especially if I'm dragged into it not of my own accord) and I get super-antsy; sometimes it works and gives me a good breather perspective. Still not something I can control as I would like.

It also strikes me that things I write on this blog are written - even designed - to knock myself down, in a way. To make myself more human and explain how and why I do what I am doing; there's no magic to it, for the most part*. No mysterious thought processes, no "but I could never do that - X is special!" sauce. I read some of my friends' blogs and go "holy cow, they think in shiny ways - they have such cool projects, great experiences, exhilarating lives." And I can only read about the high parts, or the low parts that turn into lessons and then high parts, and the things that make good stories and good drama afterwards, because that is what they write about.

I think I write that stuff, but I also write stuff that isn't shiny. I am confused and bored and lazy and I write about that. I get upset and irresponsible and sometimes I'm not a good person, and I write about that. I'm also sometimes happy for no apparent reason, and sometimes I think the world is wonderful and glorious, and I write about that too. It's not intended to have drama or a story arc or make people reading it think a certain way about me. It's just uncensored (I have mentioned this before) braindumping for the future me, to see what I was thinking in the past. I don't want to steer anybody's thoughts in a certain direction. I just want to understand my own.

*Okay, I read absurdly fast, but seriously, if this was your main information input method for the vast majority of your life, you'd become much speedier at it as well.

The statements on the flip side - that I am weird in some ways that I don't understand, sometimes, and that I am conscious that I do occasionally have an audience and react to it accordingly, and a lot of other things - they're also true.

My mental flywheel's getting jittery (part of this is that I am re-learning how to deal with and enjoy loneliness as SOP). I'm going to drop the laptop and go do more unpacking 'till I pass out. Tomorrow I help my cousin move back into Babson's dorms. Inertia! Inertia! Go, go, go!