> "Because of how my brain overthinks everything and every interactions, thoughts can easily become twisted and I can overload my brain with tasks and lists." Someone started out their mini-essay with that sentence, and it reminded me of an experience I had while out on a walk. Because of recent changes to my habits and lifestyle, I have become better able to notice some of my thought patterns. One of them is that during times of stress or worry, I tend to keep directing my thoughts back to the main items on my “what I’m worried about” list, as if I’m afraid that if I don’t keep them propped up in the foreground of my consciousness, I will lose them and then the bad thing I’m worried about will somehow be more likely to happen. Kind of a negative form of magical thinking. I think it’s a response to feeling powerless; if I just train mental energy on a mental totem or icon of the thing, I somehow gain power over it. The power of naming things, perhaps. So, tired of feeling tired and anxious, I tried an experiment. I gave myself permission to stop holding the worrisome things in my mind—but with limitations so that I wouldn’t panic. So, it was “until I get to the next bridge over the trail” or whatever. Knowing the time period of mental anarchy was finite made it seem OK to let go a little bit. In “let go” mode, I some of the things did drift back in, but I let that be OK and then I let them drift back out again. It was a weird kind of relaxation mixed with work. Kind of like those “can you see the 3D image if you half focus and half let your vision blur” books from the nineties. Impossible until you (almost accidentally) feel how to do it, then surprisingly easy. During the “let go” periods, I noticed more leaves and colors and patterns and beauty—a present-tense, visually-oriented mindscape became prominent. I breathed a little easier. It occurs to me that this may be close to what people call meditation—ha! I think I “invented” for myself a thing that people have been practicing for centuries! Well, sometimes that’s the only way to make something make sense on a personal level.