Befuddled

Well, I am trying to lay off Vocal at the moment, due to the return of an RSI problem that once saw me unable to drive for two years. Currently typing hurts, scrolling hurts, even picking up my phone hurts. Rest it, I tell myself, use it only for work. And maybe the next challenge. And maybe this and maybe that and then, then, then.... and here I am again. I thought I had missed Penny's part B (link at the bottom), but having realised I had not, well, just a teeny tiny little but of typing, no?

Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you....Befuddled.

Befuddled: Confused, perplexed, unable to think clearly.

What it means to me: I am a thinker. Most of us humans are, I find. I think broadly and repetitively, I think deeply and I think with a leaning towards the thoughtless. But, being human, I think continuously. I am a thinking machine! Often, I am excruciatingly aware that I am thinking too many thoughts, and none of them get to finish their trajectory and hence be cast off as thoughts already thunk. Frequently I recognise that I am holding five, six, seven, eight strands of larger thought, and dropping one each time I pick another up, rendering the tapestry a corrupted image, a partial picture, a scene without sense.

Being human, a state to which I have already confessed, I am, perhaps uniquely in the animal world, capable of thinking all of this whilst SIMULTANEOUSLY having thoughts about my thoughts. In my younger years, such a state of cognitive chaos sparked rather negative musings. Words such as "idiot", "stupid" "annoying" and "useless". These, as you might imagine, did not do a lot to aid the situation. However, some ghastly magic occurs when we have young children around us, and on the birth of mine I began to have thoughts about my thoughts about my thoughts. "Totally unacceptable!" I said to myself. "You blithering nitwit!" I declared, employing, you will note, another blinding b word. "Bother", I thought, entering the fourth level of meta cognition, "I am now being punitive towards myself about being punitive towards myself about something that is an entirely human normality."

Now, as I have already outlined, I cannot STOP the thoughts about the thoughts about the thoughts. But I can re-language them. And so now, when that swirling cacophony of ponderings plagues me, and I have cause to confess my confusion, I declare myself neither idiot nor nitwit. I am now, as the deepening creases upon my brow pay homage to a long history of perplexedness, officially perennially befuddled. Which sounds, I am sure you will agree, far more worthy of kindness and patience. If only my younger self had been less befuddled, she might have known this too.

Befuddled

When your brain's unceasing contortions

Engender surrealist distortions,

When clarity's cowered and huddled,

Why then you may just be befuddled.

When you're mired in cloudy confusion

Grey cells mottled blue with contusion,

When your brain cries out to be cuddled,

It's likely you're feeling befuddled.

When you find yourself somewhat perplexed

And that makes you impatient and vexed,

Don't get yourself worried or muddled,

It's simply that you are befuddled.