Hamster Wheel Thinking


Woke up this morning to the silence of snow and total awareness that it was not time to get up. I don't keep a clock beside my bed and in the winter especially in the middle of a snow storm there are no telltale signs of morning approaching. But I knew. So I snuggled down deeper into the covers surrounded by fur kids and sought to go back to sleep.

Almost succeeded a couple times but my mind was beset with hamster-wheel-thinking. I used to raise hamsters as a kid and sold them to pet stores. They love their wheels. I used to watch them run in them endlessly and wonder if they knew they were not getting anywhere. To this day I cannot get on a treadmill or a stair stepper and not think of hamsters and their wheels. But I digress. Subject of this blog is hamster-wheel-thinking - going round and round a subject and not getting anywhere but back to where you started.

When my mind gets into HWT mode it doesn't matter what subject it is tossing around endlessly. This morning at approximately 3 a.m. it began with a movie from Netflix I watched last night - A Time to Kill based on a novel by John Grisham. I have read the book and maybe even seen the movie before. Both book and movie have some unforgettable parts. I kept replaying those in my mind. There are times having a photographic memory is not a blessing. Three in the morning comes to mind.

In HWT of my experience there is always one dominant theme (this time the movie) and all other subjects you try to force your mind to come back to this. Interlaced this morning was my own pending testimony before a court (make not to avoid legal thrillers until after wards), and todo list items scheduled for much later in the morning that the snow might delay (looks like about 6 to 10 inches in the porch light), and things not on the todo list (tax time is rapidly approaching, and oddly enough an idea for a new painting.

At four in the morning I just gave up. Something I noticed as a kid hamsters didn't do until dawn. So the day is beginning a bit earlier than usual. Oh, and BTW, if you have not seen A Time to Kill or read the book I recommend both.

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