This entry, and possibly the next couple of posts, are going to be pretty tediously selfish. Meish. I've been a little edgy lately, and I need to figure out why, so I'll be using my blog as a sort of bargain-basement therapist. If you're interested in reading about my inner turmoil: huzzah, you're in luck. Otherwise, you may wish to skip to the last paragraph, which contains the word "anus."

Figuring out what's bugging me is difficult, because I don't have a lot of self-control when it comes to my inner monologue. The inside of my head is a chattering barrage, and at any moment it might be occupied with Phil Collins lyrics, grocery lists, the layout of the backyard of the house where I grew up, a rehashing of an argument from three days ago, concern about someone I heard about on the news, and what to do for Father's Day.

Some of these items are relevant and deliberately on my mind. Many of them simply appeared, seemingly unbidden, to jostle for attention.

It's a bit like channel-surfing with 20 different TVs, and you're not sure which TV is controlled by the one single remote in your hand.

As a result, the din is hard to analyze, even after 27 years of listening to it. Figuring out what I am actually thinking about -- for example, if you were to say, "what's on your mind" -- is incredibly hard. Remember that "20 different TVs" analogy, and now imagine that you're trying to figure out exactly what's they're saying on a single screen.

Or: reading my own thoughts is like trying to remember a dream. I can vaguely apprehend a few pieces, but the moment I try to actually grasp them, they disappear and I'm only left with the sensation of trying to remember something that maybe didn't happen.

So anyway, that's why this process is so challenging for me.

If I need to figure out why I'm in a bad mood, I have to rely on pattern recognition: like keeping a dream journal, I have to sneak up on my channel-surfing, take a frenzied glance at the TVs, and then lay low for a while before repeating. Eventually, through these sneak attacks on my psyche, I start to recognize repeating elements.

So that's where I'm at. Taking stock of the din. I guess I'll have to report back in a bit once I can discern some signal in the noise. Anus.