The Soundness of My Day

More and more, the soundness of my day- along with my emotional and mental stability- is related to the flow of information. The old adage, “Garbage in, garbage out.” is an allusion to this. It’s also what the writer is referring to; “As a man thinks, so is he.”

The types and amounts of info i receive are exhausting in any given day. (more on sabbath some other time?) They include the initial thoughts of the day, the office readings, email, advertisements on the way to work, radio on the way to work, txts, twitters, the music i choose, the interactions with coworkers, the language lessons, the development stuff i listen to, phone calls with friends, things that need to be done in the yard, the movie from last night, the neighbor having a garage sale, the “gas crisis”, the sites i visit for news on sports, world events, local stuff, weird stuff, stocks, blogs,  conversations of people in the offices next to ours, the ups man, the fedex man, the dhl man, the mail lady, did the tigers lose again last night? yes. 71-82 on the season. Fannie Mae is being restructed and up 8% on that news. Most of Nashville has gas again this morning. The clothing brand theory (all lowercase) was actually created by Elie Tahari… which is why the two lines are so similar. And it turns out Bunny was on vacation after all. 

Some of this information i seek out, some of it just comes to me without asking. The phrase, “A world of pain.” comes to mind- just because it’s been bouncing around in my head since yesterday, not because it fits. All of this gets jumbled and smashed together. The messages, subtle and overt, are so varied its unbelievable. Even mixed messages coming from similar places. For creatives, it’s really no different. You aggregate tons of info- purposefully channeling, sorting and foldering helpful stuff and rerouting distractions to spam. Discipline is the concrete for creativity. Hmm, isn’t there a bible verse about taking every thought captive? Too bad the ancient scriptures aren’t relevant today…

Our brains are master aggregators- taking in all kinds of information through the day. Through feeds and readers, to use the web analogy, we are connected to so much. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think the world at our fingertips can be, in fact, a really good thing. It comes down to filters. A chosen mind set each and every day. What messages will i accept and believe today? Is there a lie in my soup? Is there truth hidden in what i’ve read or thought this morning? The price of connectivity is time spent prayerfully sorting it all out. Can’t let it just pass through my mind unchecked. I need to have sniffer dogs at the borders. Antcipate the onslaught of info- read over the horizon.

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