Thinking

When I teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I often run into AW in the Cathedral of Learning. Whenever I walk away from AW, I'm always stunned by how much actually goes on in my brain, and how much of it just came pouring out of my mouth.

I'm not quite sure if it's AW's listening ear that incites this, or the fact that AW sees me at the beginning and in the middle of long days that have entirely too many people interactions in them. In an effort to keep my mind free to process the interactions, everything else just comes tumbling out. Or perhaps AW is just that trustworthy (she is).

On any given day, these are the things that mingle in my mind:
-the aims of education
-the explosion of conversation about race and culture that happened in my classroom
-something about yoga (my research or my practice)
-my relationship with the church
-musings about marriage
-the business market research that I might be doing
-the difficulties of writing someone else's book in a genre you don't know
-how to tutor an esl student effectively
-Kylie's latest favorite board game
-anything about God
-being tired
-students who don't turn in essays
-students who keep me after class to wax philosophically
-the state of the mfa program / new hires
-reconciling missions with God
-job hunts

When these bouts of logorrhea occur, I'm struck by just how much I think about in such different areas (right now the big topics are: education, business, religion, yoga, & relationships). Then I realize three things:

1) how hard I am on myself in all of the above topics
2) how much nicer I need to be to myself about my thinking because I really am juggling a lot of thought real estate
3) I need to chill out.

And then, generally, I do chill out. So, thanks, AW, for the subconscious reminder to chill out. Profuse apologies for distracting you from your work. :) Thanks for listening.