Day 59 - Round and Round

Have you ever noticed that the same ideas keep coming round in your head? The same thoughts, the same concepts. Often they are subtly different but sometimes it is just the same thing looping round and round and round. I came to write my blog tonight and the first five topics I thought about have all been done at some point in the not too distant past.

It's not as if the world is short of things to write about either. I just seem to keep returning to the same things over and over again. I suppose it is the human brain equivalent of some kind of feedback loop, once you start thinking about one thing you are always drawn back to it. There is one particular drinking game (the Name Game) - some of the rules have been semi-nicked from here - that showcases this phenomenon quite accurately.

Everybody sits in a circle and someone starts by saying the name of someone famous, or pretty close to being famous as far as those people are concerned.

The next person says a name that starts with the first letter of the last name of the previous name. For example,

 
    Mel Brooks
        |
        Bart Simpson
             |
             Steve Redgrave
                   |
                   Richard Burton 
                           |
                           Bill Clinton
                                |
                                Chris Brown

If a player can't think of a name IMMEDIATELY, they must drink for the DURATION until they can think of an appropriate name.

Now you'd be amazed how difficult it is at this point to think of some whose first name begins with a B and who isn't either Bill Clinton or Bart Simpson! Why? Why does the brain get locked into this loop whereby all you can think of is TWO people in the whole world whose first name begins with a B.

I'm sure there is some very technical psychological terms for this behvaiour but, short of that, I'm going to describe this as a teeny bit bizarre. The mind has got locked into a weird loop and (maybe as you are under pressure and/or quite boozed) it reverts back to its short term memory and tries to drag stuff up from there. Maybe I'm talking crap, but it seems a pretty reasonable explanation!

Well that is pretty much what has been going on in my head everytime I've tried to think of a blog post recently. I'm putting it down to the need for a holiday but who knows what is actually going on up there. All I know is that I can guarantee within a few weeks I'll be thinking "why don't I write a blog about how difficult it is to write original posts". The whole cycle will happily repeat itself over and over it seems.

On the plus side I have just about managed to write a blog post about the fact that I can't think of anything new to write about, so maybe the old grey matter isn't as useless as I'm giving it (lack of) credit for!

Till later,
Tom