Ikea and the Internet

"Writing is not just how I communicate my thoughts but how I actually think.  It's the way an experience or a fleeting thought becomes real to me instead of floating away.  It's the way I catch my thoughts and turn them over and over, testing their weight and deciding whether to keep them or throw them away.  For me, to write is to become, and I can't become that older, wiser person without skewering these youthful thoughts to paper, without holding them up for my scrutiny and yours." 
 

I didn't write the words above, but I might as well have.  Alisa Harris, who wrote the above in her book Raised Right, has the same reasons for writing I do: to get my thoughts out of my head so I can look at them, so others can look at them, so I can learn from them.  I can't process something as well that is still up in my head.

My best friend says that my brain is like an Ikea.  I still don't know exactly what she means by that, but when I have too many thoughts in my head, it feels like an Ikea on a Sunday afternoon when it's too crowded to comfort test the couches and all the people are opening drawers and eating meatballs and arguing with their significant others about which towel rack would look best with which soap dispenser. 

And at the end of the day, everyone buys something to take with them and the spaces are all tidied and all the things are put back in their exact proper place. 

The cleanup, the organizing, the making sense of everything - that's what writing does for me.  Sometimes I process all that by talking, but there are just too many words for other people sometimes. 

So.. Hello, internet :)