Over-thinking

One year ago tonight was my first blog entry.
In addition to one year, this is my 100th entry.
I was going to comment on one or both of those things, but I've decided that looking at the past 12 months, I'd probably rather forget 8 of them, so I am not going to comment on the passage of that time specifically.

I was then going to write a short story, but it still needs work, so maybe I'll post it some other time.

So for now, well...on over-thinking.

I have a major project -- a 15-minute composition, a collaboration with illustrators and animators, so it's 15-minutes with animations and music, performed live at the beginning of May. Our first rehearsal is less than a month away. I asked the instructor how much material I should really have done by then, and his response was, "Just don't think too much." I started laughing.

He obviously doesn't know me very well. I over-think EVERYTHING. (Except for things I over-feel and don't think at all on.)

I stay up nights thinking about every possible scenario and every possible outcome with every possible action I -- or someone else -- might take. On the one hand, it hurts sleep. On the other, I'm always calm when whatever is going to happen happens. It takes a lot to surprise me, and it takes even more for me to react in any way other than level-headed. (The only exception I can think of is unexpected brushes with mortality.)

I always think of the movie version of The Phantom Tollbooth that I used to watch as a young child. There is one line in it that may or may not be in the book -- I wouldn't know, I never actually read the book -- that has stuck with me forever.

I think Tick Tock the Watchdog says it, but upon further memory searching, it may have been the weatherman...
"Expect everything and the unexpected never happens."

I grew up with VHS cassettes of taped movies off of early and mid 80s television, and this movie -- from 1970, taped off Channel 4 -- or 5 or 7 or 38 -- from before I understood the world, showed to me at age 6, has one line that just stuck with me 16 years later, helping shape some of my life philosophies.

One year ago, I started this blog, calling it "Late-Night Thoughts" with the tag-line "what keeps you up at night?" and I'm really just getting to answering that question now. What keeps me up is my late-night thoughts; my thoughts of scenarios and possibilities; my thoughts of who I am and what I've become; my thoughts of what I want to become; and most of all, my attempt at truly expecting everything so the unexpected never happens to me.

For a while, I needed this outlet to help with some of those thoughts. Now, I've just grown used to having it.

Thanks for sticking it out with me for the past 365 days. I hope the next 366 are even more fruitful.