My brain is divided on a fairly regular basis among a number of topics: budget/money, love, death, future and writing. “Future” can mean my own, and it can also mean the direction the world is headed. Similarly, “death” is pretty much related to anyone’s mortality — mine, in the sense of, “I don’t want to look back on my life and wish I would’ve done…,” or it can be related to my grandparents, parents, etc. The percentages change, but the topics are relatively consistent. It’s a pie chart of sorts, if you will.

Lately, its focus has been in the writing area. And it’s frustrating, because most of my thinking and ideas are starting to come at night, right before I fall asleep. I’ve started keeping pen and paper by my bed, but when you’re cozy underneath the blankets, reaching over and writing them down feels like more of a chore than it actually is. So I craft a mnemonic to remember the ideas the next morning, lest my arm get a chill when scribbling down words…but then I promptly forget the mnemonic device, as well. There have been so many ideas lately that it feels like my head is about to explode. And then there’d be pie-brain everywhere.

This morning I was driving to work and I wondered if I was on the verge of a breakdown — and I’m not speaking in automotive terms. I’m speaking in personal, mental terms. If my head exploded, I can tell you exactly where the pressure would’ve originated: at the base of my neck.

Something about this morning’s drive had me on edge. Maybe it was just something in the air, because my mood was, more or less, fine. Maybe it’s because I was listening to the news about three more Orange County murders and five different crime scenes that gripped the county in the pre-dawn darkness. Maybe it was the gray weather which, normally, I love. Whatever it was, the base of my neck held more tension than I can ever remember feeling, save for migraine-inspired tension. But there was no migraine.

I got to work and immediately scribbled down a few words — some were emotions, others adjectives. They had been tumbling around in my head during my commute — boiling over, almost — and I had to let them out. Interestingly, they sparked a few reminders about late-night ideas that I’d long since forgotten about, and also pushed me up and over the writer’s block I’ve been struggling to ditch with regard to a story I’ve been working on.

To say that I can be exhaustingly hyper-aware of myself, my emotions and things around me would be an understatement; it’s usually what drives me to seek out and enjoy a lot of solo time. But today I am thankful for the internal bubbling over that resulted in ideas being recalled, and stories being furthered. Everything happens for a reason, even if the road to getting there is bumpy and that reason isn’t always recognized at the beginning — and now this piece of the pie might just take a backseat for a while as a result.