Do you ever feel the need to ramble? Like you have so many thoughts and half thoughts crowding up your head you just need to get some of them out so you can make room for the important stuff. I get that way some times. There is so much going on inside my head that I can’t focus on anything. I remember times when I’ve tried to have conversations with people or have a meeting about something when my head has been like that. I don’t think those have ever been very productive. I get to the end and I have to ask what we just talked about and if I agreed to do anything. And I kind of just sit there with an empty look on my face.

Sometimes I get that way because I’m tired, and getting a few good night’s sleep really helps with that. Other times I get that way because there is just way too much going on in my life and I wore out my brain trying to focus on all of it. I think that’s what happened this time around. There are some big things going on in addition to my normally busy life, and my brain has just had enough and is slowly shutting down. I can get a few good hours out of it each day, and after that it’s a crap shoot if anything worthwhile will come out of me.

There are times when my head is so full and I can’t hold on to any one thought long enough to think it all the way through, that I just need to start clearing my head. The idea of a Pensieve in the Harry Potter books is completely applicable at times like these. I just need to empty my head of all the extra thoughts so there is room up there to bounce the good thoughts around till they make sense. Some of those random extra thoughts end up here. Some times I start writing the important thoughts in my journal so they can bounce around there and I can look at them. Some of the extra thoughts get dumped at the feet of my friends in random run-on emails or when I just start talking and can’t really stop and I just need someone to listen to my thoughts so they feel like they were worth something. I’m very grateful for my friends who just let me ramble at different times.

I just needed to ramble a bit today. Thank you for your time.

As I was driving to work this morning, I noticed something unusual. I was calm. I was relatively well rested. And I was calm. I hate mornings. I am not a morning person. I delay mornings as much as possible. And it doesn’t help any that when I wake up my apartment is cool and my bed is nice and warm. Who would want to wake up then? Why would any sane person get out of a soft comfy warm bed to go to work? But this morning I got up for some reason without too much difficulty. I got ready for work and calmly, peacefully drove to work. It was a very strange sensation for me. There were beautiful big snow flakes falling while I drove too.

I was looking in my scriptures today, at all the things I’ve written in them. I’ve had them for almost five years now. They look well loved. It makes me smile.

At the front I have written a few quotes I’ve found that touched me and I wanted to be able to return to easily. The last one on the first page of quotes made me think about the noise in my life.

We need to find God, and he cannot be fuond in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence.
– Mother Teresa

Last week when my family got together for my sister’s wedding, my brother was explaining that he was sensitive to noise at time and his doctor was trying to fix it. He doesn’t get migraines, but there are times when he is more sensitive to noise. I can be very sensitive to noise at different times too, but I also get migraines and sensitivity to light.

The other day I saw an article on MSN called Is Your Life Too Loud. It talks about how sound around 70-80 decibles causes stress levels to rise in our body as a defence mechanism. It then goes on to talk about the sound levels of many common things in our life. Life is getting louder and louder. For some reason we feel the need to have bigger speakers in everything, to constantly have music or tv or some sound going. And it is ruining not only our hearing, but our health.

I keep my tv and radio turned down so I can hear them, but only just. There isn’t a need to turn it up as loud as I can. My students often ask me to turn up the volume on their computers. They don’t like it when I don’t. They can hear the computer, it just isn’t as loud as they are used to. I don’t want to damage their hearing anymore than they are already doing. Usually by the end of a work day the sound of the computer fans constantly going is enough to drive me crazy. I turn them off and try to make the room as quiet as possible as soon as I can. I wonder just how loud my classroom gets during the day. It would be interesting to find out. I’d probably guess it’s loud enough to significantly raise the stress level in my body though.

Why do we have to have so much noise all of the time? What ever happened to sitting still and pondering, meditating, relaxing, in the natural silence? I’m going to try to sit in the quiet more over the next few days; to enjoy the birds outside my window at my bird feeder; to relax.