{02} What is 67 minus 22? (Answer: Still too many.)

Wherein I use a whole bunch of different metaphors to describe my brain.

Oops, had this post 99% drafted and forgot to finish and post it yesterday! I'm still calling it day 02 and we'll see if I can squeeze out another (likely much shorter) post later today!

When I opened this draft to start today’s yesterday’s post, I glanced up at the absurdity that is my Chrome browser’s tab situation. (Spoiler alert: I had S I X T Y - S E V E N tabs open.)

In that split-second glance (before I counted the tabs), my brain immediately held dozens of overlapping thoughts, like hearing the choruses of ten different songs all at the same time and being able to sorta recognize most of them at one point or another, but none taking center stage for more than a beat or two.

My brain told me, “You have each and every one of these tabs open for a reason, and they are all incredibly important and you will definitely forget the task(s) associated with them if this browser crashes. But also, you have a whole other set of tasks (on sticky notes, in Google Keep, etc.) that need more urgent attention, so you have to leave these tabs right where they are and move along with your day until you have the bandwidth, some other day, to tackle them.”

So, yeah. All of that happened in the span of about 16 seconds, and then I looked at this big blank page to try to figure out what to write about for this post, and in a classic avoidance move, I opted instead to count how many tabs I had open, just for funsies!

The really sad thing is, when I counted those 67 tabs, my next discernible thought was, “Yeah but I have wayyyyyy more tabs open on my phone’s Chrome browser, so 67 ain’t lookin’ so bad…”¹

But anyway, the next thought after that was, “Maybe I can get rid of some of these open tabs right now and clear a little bit of space in my head.”

And wouldn’t ya know it? In less than five minutes, I got it down to 45 tabs, because it turns out a bunch of those tabs had become irrelevant/OBE²!

Listen, I don’t actually have a plan for where this post is headed—I just wanted to give you a peek inside my mental pinball machine so you can manage expectations for the rest of the month.

In conclusion: Even if I somehow manage to clear out all but a handful of open tabs—or even if, heaven forbid, all my different browsers crashed at once and left me with zero open tabs—I do not foresee a day in my future where the metaphorical tabs that are just perpetually open in my brain total anything less than eleventy-seven³. Fortunately, I've learned a lot of “hacks” to adjust the volume on the giant sound mixing board of my brain, and I can usually manage to dim the background noise, tune into the more productive/positive stuff, and get on with my day. (Therapy helps, too.)⁴

1. My Chrome app will only show me the number of open tabs up to 99, and after that it just has a little “:D” instead, and y’all I am fairly certain there are easily 200+ tabs in that tiny browser right now, but I absolutely will not be counting them for you today.

2. Overcome By Events

3. Or, 117. (I looked up the definition of eleventy because I couldn't remember if it was actually a number or the 11 AM pre-lunch treat of the Hobbits; turns out the latter is “elevenses,” and now I’m hungry.)

4. Now I’m just having too much fun with the footnote feature. But seriously, thank God for good therapists!