Optical Brain Worms

Hey now, don't go getting all grossed out. There are no actual worms involved here. Possibly no actual brain either. It's just a phrase I use to attempt to describe a phenomenon.

Likely you've heard the expression "ear worm." It refers to what happens when a piece of music gets stuck in your head playing on an endless loop. It keep going until, well, until whatever works for you ends it. Perhaps another piece of music takes over, one not so sticky. Perhaps you actually learn to play or sing that song and can put it to rest as a fait accompli. Maybe something just hiccups and it's gone while you've been too busy to take note.

My current ear worm was the only piece of music the last couple weeks I caught on the radio that wasn't X-mas music. It was a little piano piece by Beethoven, "Rage Over A Lost Penny." I identified it immediately, but shut off the car before it finished. It's still racing through me whenever things go quiet. Almost comforting, actually. Almost. Hard to sleep with though. Way too energetic. But I'm too fond of it to get serious about getting rid of it.

I experience something similar visually. Not with the actual eye, but that proverbial mind's eye. Take for example something experienced  about 20-some years ago. We'd just gotten a few little fantail goldfish, and I was fascinated by how their fins and tails moved. After a couple days, I could be reading a book or driving and their waving patterns would intrude. Not unpleasant, not distracting from safety or plot lines, but just there. Over and over, for a couple months. I can still visualize it, though now it has to be done consciously. It leaves when I abandon the effort.

My rounds of insomnia were plagued by the same kind of thing, only this time it was about designing jewelry, trying to figure out how to accomplish a particular technique I'd never learned yet. It wouldn't drop me until either I figured it out, learned I couldn't come up with even a clue using my beginning skill levels, or just got up, came into the living room, and drew the plan on paper, however poorly. If I was really awake, I might even work with wire to try to do whatever it was.

Something like that is going on now. Again, it's visual. Again, it's intrusive, poking in around the corners at every opportunity. This time, however, I know the techniques I need, and I'm well into making my second one. But that's just it. I'm merely well into it, not finished. And more varieties are there in the pipeline, waiting their turns. This time I'm working on tree of life pedants. I know how they're done, have finished two to my satisfaction. It's those unfinished ones that keep intruding. Oh heck, it's the latest finished one too. I keep seeing those tiger eye chips on wires bending and wrapping all over within the wire circle they are affixed to. Nevermind the planned turquoise one, or the amethyst one, or the malachite one, or the one with 3 mm clear bicone swarovski crystals, all to be mounted on sterling wires of course.

Knowing that keeping the fingers busy is paradoxically both the cause and the cure, and that finishing enough of them to finally get a bit bored will finally exorcise this optical brainworm, it's not happening. Not even started. The totally unimportant  to proceeding with that is that the supplies happen to be packed away in their box, nicely organized, waiting. But it took a bit to actually get that organized. And I'm still organizing all the decorations coming down to be put away after X-mas. Somehow, that needs to be finished first before I can renew the old jewelry clutter. And before that happens, I need to create more chaos in pulling out the little boxes to pack it all back up in till next year. There's a hitch in that particular giddyup.

So I work around it, rather than on it. The floor got vacuumed. I don't expect more than a dozen plastic tree needles will reappear out of nowhere now. I was thorough! And there no longer are dogs in the house to spread the blame around on. Of course, now the vacuum needs to be emptied before I can put it away and get out those boxes for packing the ornaments. And emptying the vacuum needs to wait on the rain to quit. It seems there are leaks where the metal patio roof meets the house roof, so the concrete floor is wet where the dripping rain trails across  and off the edge, and I can't empty the canister of dirt if the spilled dust will stick on the wet spots and create mud which can't be swept because it cakes and clings to the broom, making that useless for cleaning anywhere inside the house, and....

Phew!

So, tomorrow, perhaps.

Oh, and have you noted, that before I can do any of the rest of it, I have to finish this blog post. Because, well, it just has to be first. I'm almost beat enough now to try to go back to bed. Maybe, instead of counting smelly sheep, I can try counting shiny gemstone nuggets getting mounted on wires bending this way and that on clumps of wires which split off from the big twist into smaller and smaller clumps, each of those bending this way and that and back the other....

Oh crap! Here it goes again.