The Rest of My Life: Thinking...

            6:00 am

            Howling cat fed.  Now it's time for my first coffee, then my quiet half-hour in the armchair.  As usual, once her bowl's empty, Daisy comes in licking her whiskers.  She has a quick look around, checks outside the window, then jumps up onto my lap and stretches out Sphinx-like - her tail whopping me around the face until she's properly settled.

            I can switch down now.  Stick my head into low-power, free-flow mode.

            Some people don't like to be alone with their thoughts.  My brother is one such. In his later working years he worked from home, hand-drawing plans for loft conversions, home extensions, things like that - the sort of thing that requires concentration.  He told me he had to have some form of distraction while he was doing it - the radio or TV on in the background, or a CD playing.  Anything... as long as he didn't have to engage with his thoughts.  He was the same after his divorce from his first wife, when - in his late 20s - he went to live on his own for the first time in his life.  He couldn't handle it!  He hated going home to silence, or even to just having a night in with the TV.  He re-joined the rowing club and went down there every night to train, finishing up in the bar with the other lads afterwards before heading home to bed.  At weekends, he'd be off with the lads to regattas, pubs, night clubs.  He went to singles nights.  Over a couple of years, he had a string of girlfriends.  He was out every night.  He couldn't be alone.  He needed someone with him all the time. 

            "I'd go nuts if I just had sit in a chair with my thoughts," he used to say.

            I'm the polar opposite.  We occupy different universes entirely.  I've always craved space and time alone - right from childhood, when I'd come home from school and go straight to my room.  In my teens, mum and dad were worried about the time I used to spend on my own.  They tried to get me to go to youth clubs.  I never did.  I mean, school was bad enough!  Why would I then want to go out and surround myself with people again in the evenings?  I craved my own time - time where I could shut the world out, shut people out, be alone.  Not lonely.  Alone.

            Blaise Pascal said  'All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.'  I don't know if that's the case, really.  But I think there's something in it.  And I often wonder why it is that people like my brother - and many other people I've met who are like him - can't do that: disengage from distractions and just be at one with their thoughts.  Day-dreaming.  Wool-gathering. Imagining and creating.  Thinking things through instead of letting them pile up.

            Of course, there's the other side of it, too: over-thinking.  That's a charge I've often had levelled at me, as an autistic person.  "You over-think these things."  I've never regarded it in that way, though.  To me, it's just... thinking!  Something I enjoy doing - even if my thoughts are often inconsequential!

            Of course, too, there's the perfectly valid reason that if you stop and think about things too much, it can be frightening.  The cost of living.  Debt.  The state of the world.  The climate crisis.  The wars raging everywhere.  The mindless death and destruction. Too much of the doom can send you spiralling very quickly, if you let it.

            It's finding that balance - hard in itself nowadays when we're bombarded with information from all quarters every second of our waking lives.  But that's why, again, I think it's so necessary to switch off.  Just for a short while.

            Like I do with my coffee and cat in the mornings!  Close my eyes, focus down on my breathing, let the thoughts drift where they might... and then slowly away.

            And then back to the day again...

            6:30 am now.  What am I going to do today?

            Get out for my cycle ride.  Pick up the shopping I need.  Get back.  Do the housework.  Have a shower.  Eat breakfast.  Make another coffee.  Do a bit of reading.

            Then write this.

            Later this afternoon, I'm meeting up with some of my ex-colleagues from work for some 'retirement' drinks at a pub in town.

            So... tomorrow, I may not be up quite so early.

            And I might not do any thinking at all!

            Except perhaps "Never again!"

            Until the next time...