Why

So, given what I just said, why continue to post these?

My daughter claims that the way to defeat an earworm is to listen to the song. That the source of the earworm is some part of your brain that's frustrated because it can't remember all the parts of the song exactly - usually it's some of the words that you can't quite conjure up. When you listen to it, that part of your brain says, "Right - that's it" and lets it go.

One of the characteristics of depression is a repeating pattern of distressing thoughts - no matter how hard you try to distract yourself or to convince yourself - by reason and logic - that the thoughts are wrong, no matter how much will power you try to exert to simply stop thinking that! . . . they won't stop.

Just like an earworm, but Bad Stuff. A train of thought instead of a tune.

Long before I heard my daughter's Theory of Earworms, I felt like - if I could just write it all down, it would go away.

I could keep a journal - and I have attempted to many times. But I can never keep it up. It seems pointless. With a journal, I'm just talking to myself, and I'm already talking to myself in my head.

The point of a blog is that you're theoretically talking to someone else. Even if no one else in the entire worldwide web of electrons and pixels ever reads it - there is at least the possibility that someone will stumble across it. Maybe just to say, "Huh" and move on, but still.

So I'll see. Maybe this will be different from a journal. I'm not particularly interested in actually writing the Bad Stuff that gets stuck in my head, but I am interested in writing about the reasons that particular Bad Stuff got stuck there. How brains work, why we think the way we do. Or why I think the way I do.

It may not be original or profound or brilliantly written (see whatIjustsaid), but what the hell.

[published on 7/20/09]