Going off on one

There’s some­thing I need to explain, once and for all. It’s been on my mind recently because, er, it is my mind. Or some­thing. Oh, you know. I prob­ably ought to issue the usual warn­ing mes­sage — yes, stand well back folks, I’m about to Go Off On One.

I’ve come to real­ise that I have an almost patho­lo­gical inab­il­ity to cope with hav­ing a clear head. By that, I mean that it drives me up the wall, round the bend and finds me chew­ing con­crete if my mind is not occu­pied by a mil­lion dif­fer­ent things. I have to be busy to be happy (well, rel­at­ively happy). I have to have chal­lenges — if not daily, at least every other day. I hoped that this was only a recent change in my char­ac­ter — one that would even­tu­ally dis­ap­pear — but look­ing back over my life I’ve real­ised that it’s always been there. Before I entered the scary and professional(ish) world of work, it mani­fes­ted itself at uni­ver­sity — I was never hap­pier on my Drama course than if I was snowed under with aca­demic work, rehears­ing and dir­ect­ing one pro­duc­tion, stage man­aging another show, design­ing pub­li­city for another, and indul­ging in a hec­tic social life.

Yet I’ve also real­ised that I’m not alone in this, and that reas­sures me greatly. In the past week, a text mes­sage and an email came my way that both car­ried much the same idea. The text mes­sage pro­posed an entirely sens­ible the­ory about why it is vitally import­ant to be a busy per­son. The email sug­ges­ted that if you are not being chal­lenged and exten­ded in a cent­ral part of your daily life, then you are likely to find it more dif­fi­cult to force your­self into car­ry­ing through all the other excit­ing pro­jects you have in mind (it’s the “Sunday after­noon syn­drome” appar­ently — think about that title and it will all become clear).

Fur­ther­more, and although it may seem a strange the­ory, blog­gers are a per­fect example of this thirst for chal­lenges, and the urgent need to keep a con­stantly occu­pied mind. Most aren’t sat­is­fied with just a web­log, oh no — they hardly pause for breath after get­ting online with that, before they are launch­ing little pro­jects here, there and every­where. If the UK’s elec­tri­city sys­tem could har­ness their com­bined energy, the nuc­lear power sta­tions would most likely be out of business.

Things, things, things — I need con­stant stim­u­la­tion. I need mind food. Is that very juven­ile? Does my brain need to be con­stantly occu­pied so that it’s not think­ing of other issues? (I could answer that last ques­tion, but I’m not going to, as I will only end up incrim­in­at­ing myself). Or am I simply search­ing for ways to fend off the gen­eral sense of “ennui” that can settle over much of one’s every­day life?

Once again, my inane ram­bling doesn’t have an answer at the end of it. But hav­ing tried to speak about this almost unstop­pable desire to be busy, occu­pied and chal­lenged, I felt that the only way to truly get the point across was to put it in writing.

Soci­ety and the media have claimed that we are the “work hard, play hard” gen­er­a­tion. I think I’m dis­play­ing all the vital signs.