Morning Thoughts

giving your brain something to dig its teeth into

Lately I’ve been thinking about morning thoughts, and changing your thoughts, and gratitude and prayer and not looking at your phone first thing in the morning. Not as a form of denial but as a form of being present enough in the world that you can do good in it.

I think about our brains and how hungry they are for thoughts, and how important it is to know how to feed our brains a balanced diet. I don’t know what people do who aren’t working on writing projects. Sometimes I think the main reason I take on writing projects is to give my brain something to really dig it’s teeth into so it’s not left up to it’s own devices. Because left up to its own devices it sounds like this:

“I don’t want to go to school. I can’t believe I said that thing. What if I just disappear and no one could ever find me again. The war, the genocide, the history of human suffering. That one time I saw a dog getting dragged by a truck. I need to fix my sink. All the bugs in my garden. That sad thing my client told me. Where did all these white people come from? Why am I such an idiot.”

Basically like that only more fleshed out. Our thoughts are generally not our friends. Our poor brains, they are not ready for this world. You need to consciously give your brain something savory to think about.

But when I’m working on a book it is like “What was the word Dyke about? How was it different from Lesbian? Remember that Tribe 8 show, where everyone was topless and the singer pulled a giant dildo out of her pants and cut it off? Where can I weave in that sentence ‘it’s basically a bunch of people getting to know each other in the first week of summer camp, where summer camp lasts for 8 years and summer camp is a town.’”

I try to be rigorous about my morning thought-replacements.

I step outside and say hello to the plants which is my own type of prayer. I look out as far as my eyes can see because the brain likes that, orienting to the far distance so it doesn’t feel trapped.

I don’t look at the phone for at least a 1/2 hour. There is nothing I’m going to find there that I will be able to act on first thing in the morning.

If a worry or negative thought comes up I tell it I will think about it later. Not shaming it, just telling it gently that there’s plenty of time but not now. When I start thinking about going to work, I refocus on the fact that this hour I’m in is all mine.