Listing

We all have quirks about us, little idiosyncrasies that make us who we are. I always thought I was aware of mine, but I recently discovered something peculiar about myself that I’ve never noticed before: I make lists in the back of my head. I don’t know how long I’ve been doing it, but I’ve caught myself on several occasions since I first noticed.

They’re not relevant lists. They have no bearing on anything that’s going on in my life. They’re just fillers, little chants that happen behind my more useful thought processes. I seem to list food the most, but sometimes I catch myself listing animals or numbers, often in a loop, repeated as though it’s a shopping list I’m trying to remember: bacon, cheese, carrots, fish... But I’m not going shopping. I don’t need to remember these things. These things have nothing to do with anything that’s happening in my day.

It was the looping that first made me notice it. I tuned into my thoughts when I was walking to work one day and they seemed to be urging me to notice them, exactly like a to-do-list that’s bugging you as you try to keep it running in the back of your mind so that you won’t forget what you have to do when you get home.

I’ve “heard” it quite a few times since then. It’s like I’m overhearing a little part of my brain carefully giving itself lists of things to keep itself focussed. I have no idea why I do this, or whether it’s something that everyone does but it seems very bizarre. What am I trying to do? Is it a way of keeping myself grounded? Perhaps I find it comforting, caught in the routine of doing something familiar.

I can’t claim I’ve looked into it in any great depth, but Google doesn’t seem to be able to help me. I’m not especially bothered by it. It doesn’t seem to be doing me any harm. But I am interested in it. I do want to know why my brain has decided that this is a good use of energy... because it seems fairly pointless to me.

Any ideas?

Image: La Pensierosa by Roberto Terracini (Photograph by Davide Terracini)