Every so often it just feels like my head is filled with floating pieces of ideas or notions. Sometimes when this happens, it helps me if I get them out of my head and turn them into something visual – like writing an article. Writing out my thoughts gives gravity to them and if I can give them gravity, then they become more real and more manageable. The simulated realness then also helps me to be realistic. However, right now, no matter how much I write and try to wrangle those floating pieces to get them to form real thoughts – they are escaping me and it’s making me wish I had a net.

This week is particularly distracting as my mother is home recovering from back surgery. What used to be a quiet work environment is now filled with the noise of television, making those ever elusive thoughts of mine even harder to capture. The apartment we live in is rather small and not a single room is sound proof so, if the TV is on, I will hear it and my floating thoughts will draw to it like a magnet making the rest of me numb from submission.

Yesterday she asked if we could watch the movie “Julie and Julia” – a dvd that she received for Christmas. I knew that the minute it turned on, work and organized thought would come to a complete stop until it was over. I knew, that I wouldn’t be able to escape it. But, I love her. So, I agreed to humor her, packed up my laptop, and settled in for two hours of this Hollywood diversion.

The movie is about a woman that decides to spend one year of her life replicating every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking cookbook and then blog about her experience as she does it. About half way through the movie, it hit me that outside of the fact that the the plot was revolving around food and therefor making my stomach growl in protest; in a surreal way I was watching myself on screen. There in front of me was a female blogger, self involved, high on ego, driving her loved ones crazy with her obsession, having the occasional meltdown, not sure where anything was going to lead, frequently questioning her judgment, but above all, desperately trying to make something in her life make sense and have purpose while never giving up hope that somehow it eventually will. It was me. By the time the movie was over, I was not only ferociously hungry, but also a little dizzy because relating to this woman somehow increased the speed of my floating thoughts and I still didn’t have a net.

I have a lot to think about this year and I know that some big changes are going to need to be made. I have a feeling that my floating thoughts syndrome is going to get worse before it gets better. If it does, then I apologize now. But, with or without a net to wrangle my floating thoughts, I have discovered, through watching that movie, that at least have hope. I have hope that I will have a happy ending like Julie and Julia did. I have hope that someday I will find an answer to the question of “what should I do with myself”. I have hope that my website has purpose and that it somehow helps people even if I can’t see them or hear from them. I have hope that someday, my life will make sense not only to me, but also to the ones I love that I just know I am making crazy.

If you think about it, maybe I do have a net to wrap my thoughts around after all. A net of hope. And I hope, you have one too.