Help! My brain is too full.

Elizabeth Schap
4 min readJun 26, 2023

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The possibilities are endless. And that’s the problem.

Glass beer bottle pouring beer into an already filled pint glass.
Photo by Tookapic on Pexels.com

Currently my mind is buzzing and swirling with ideas that have nowhere to go, sit or rest — and I don’t know what to do about it. Zero. Zilch. Na — da. All I know is that it has been a constant problem for years now. That’s right, I typed years. This isn’t some issue from last night’s lack of sleep, or a crypto currency scam that won’t go away after a weekend. We’re discussing decades of disorganization enclosed between my two ears and surrounded by skull.

Disorganization is the only way to describe it and it still doesn’t get it right. There’s just too much in my brain. Too many facts and figures, interests and desires, goals and ideas. A part of me loves every tiny blinking of a possibility that’s imagined. The other part is exhausted by the things that never got done.

“What’s the point of dreamin’,” my mind asks, “if you never plan on getting there?”

I have finally accepted that mine is not a simple brain. This is not to say that my brain is highly evolved or super-intelligent. Nothing is farther from the truth as I cannot do basic math.

No, mine is a brain that comes up with a trillion ideas and does exactly ZERO minus ZERO of them, which equals -176 ideas accomplished. (See there’s that lack of math skills.)

This is a serious problem as the ideas will not stop, the ponderings keep coming, and the questions often chase themselves around in my head with no answer. (Like, why in the world when searching Pexels are there no results for “overflowing” but the term “full” gives you, not only pictures of beer and moons, but also various men sporting degrees of beard-age? I mean I get it, full beard, but really?)

I have an unrelenting need to create things. This need will not be quenched: not by the blog I ran, the writing platforms I have tried, the doodles I draw, or the social media I scroll. And it is a problem. A huge one. One that always has me buzzing and searching and trying and….

THAT is the problem.

The problem is that I have tried to be all of the things at once in different areas. Rants on one Wordpress blog, start another for the hometown writing, give a go at being “deep and meaningful” in drafts of documents no one sees. Set up one Instagram account after another. But none of them can scratch this itch. I have to do more, write more, be more.

I’ve been kicking around ideas idea for websites and blogs for years. I’ve started and stopped multiple times. And I simply never give anything the time it needs to really become something. I always shutter it before it goes anywhere.

When my creative journey started I thought I wanted to be a travel writer but it seemed everyone wanted to be a travel writer. Then I gave writing about my home town a shot, for about 4 years before COVID turned everything in different directions. Just look at this platform and you’ll see a bunch of starts and stops. I want to connect with others, share their stories. I want to write about environmentalism and education, travel and fashion, art and home. That’s too much isn’t it?

I think I want too much.

I think I might be too much.

I wish I were simpler — that I didn’t have so many ideas and questions.

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I’ve always been too aware of the possibilities of my life. This was before the internet and social media gave you true unlimited possibilities, ideas and envy. I knew from a wee lass that the possibilities were endless, but that there wasn’t endless time to try it all, that choices had to be made or were made for you.

That is a scary final thought. It is this thought, that the lack of time to do it all will mean one wrong choice leads to a life lived unfilled, which has frozen me into the cycle of starts. Start it and you can say you tried. Give it a go, but never get serious, and you can say it didn’t work.

It’s this falsehood that a person can only be one thing, like one thing, desire to excel and be about one thing. As I’ve said, boxing a person in is the quickest way to a dull life.

So what is there to do with the brain full of ideas?

I’m still trying to figure that out.

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Elizabeth Schap

Personally: Bills fan, traveler, rebel, science nerd, educator. I write what I want — Don’t box me in. Professionally: Writer, educator, artist, BIG Dreamer.