Thinking About Thinking

I really love sleep.  Sadly, like other things I love to do, like golf and singing, I am really bad at it.  The bulb on my TV blew out yesterday, meaning my pacifier is out of order.  The one thing that allows me to doze off with relative ease is having that idiot box on.  It's like having it on shuts off the nonstop stream of meaningless drivel that parades through my brain as soon as I close my eyes.  And it really is meaningless and random, though the one constant is the thought that I need to go to sleep I need to go to sleep I need....

So last night, instead of sleeping, I read my latest copy of Poets & Writers.  The two or three articles by authors and the article about an author got me thinking about thinking.  That's called, I'm unduly proud to say I  know, metacognition.  As I read these words by and about these great writers, I realized that the thing they have in common is that they think deeply about important things.  They are profound.  I want to be profound too.  I badly want to think deeply, but I wonder if it's in me.  When I try to sit and ponder important stuff, I find myself contemplating dinner or movies or whether I need to buy new running shoes or what is the third line of this dumb song that's running through my head because I'm sick of singing the first two lines over and over and over.

But I believe I am capable of metacognizing (I'm somewhat less than convinced that this is an actual word, but I've decided that if Shakespeare can make up words I can too.) but I have to do it in writing or out loud. I seem to be able to harness this unruly child of a brain while I'm doing those things.  So I've started carrying my journal with me (Thank you Sabrina.), allowing me to jot down ideas when they wander toward the front of my mind.  And I always have this blog too. Whether any of these thoughts are actually deep is a question I guess I will leave to the reader.