Thought Stampede

So last night was an interesting night. Got to bed at a pretty reasonable hour. At my count, I was pretty tired. Didn't really feel I would have any problems. Imagined I would be refreshed and raring to go on a Monday, something I don't always get to experience.

I was wrong.

In bed for 7.5 hours. Asleep for barely more than an hour. I was caught somewhere between unable to get comfortable and unable to stop my thoughts from trucking through my brain. This is the excuse I am using for writing a shortened post. But let's see where this goes.

So the inability to get comfortable is hard to pinpoint. I can't explain it. I was tired. I was looking forward to laying down in bed. But nothing I did, no matter how or where I laid, nothing felt good. And so I never seemed to fall asleep.

The second part of the equation is what I'm more interested in. The whole thoughts thing. The whole constant stream of mind-buzzing thoughts. Some of them were by choice, I can admit. Some things were worth mulling over while I slumbered. Yeah I just wrote slumbered. I was sick of writing the same words over and over again, deal with it. So while some of the ideas and people and conversations and movies that crossed my mind were intentional, there was a slew of hectic mess than swirled my slightly unconscious mind. Are we able to control our own thoughts? I understand when we're dreaming that we don't have control of our thoughts. That kinda makes sense to me. But when we're awake, or at least not asleep, shouldn't we have a stronger ability to filter the things that plague us?

Is there part of our mind that can overtake preference? Would it let thoughts get through that could ultimately be damaging? Can this explain why sometimes, you can't sleep at night? Can the uncontrolled masses get past our own forced thoughts to keep our mind as restless as our body appears? Was there any way I didn't end this post with a question?

[Just a thought tangent, no picture of inspiration]