It's like lice.

You know when someone is talking about lice? All of the sudden, just as though that someone was dumping a bucket of the nearly-invisible vampires over your head, the words immediately make your scalp tingle, then itch, and before you know it, you're tearing your nails through your hair, wiggling your body, trying to rid yourself of the imaginary little creatures who almost certainly are not clinging to your hair. You know that feeling?

Well, I get that feeling every day while at work, except not about lice. I get it about my unknown career path.

It's the best way I know how to describe the feeling. Or, I could maybe compare it to hypochondriacs...people who think they have whatever disease they're reading about, or watching on T.V. That might possibly be a better way to describe it. But I discovered that a true hypochondriac is someone who thinks small symptoms are huge illnesses, not necessarily someone who thinks s/he has every disease s/he encounters. But anyway...I digress.

My work doesn't take a lot of brain power. While the data I'm dealing with is interesting, it really takes little thought, which allows me to listen to whatever I choose to let stream through my headphones.

At first, it was music. I fell in love with Pandora Radio and would constantly listen to my Ingrid Michaelson station. As I listened to each song, I would think of my own songs, my own lyrics, melodies...what I could use as backup instruments or beat patterns. I began imagining myself on stage, with small crowds at first, then larger and larger numbers, building a fan base. I imagined one of my songs coming up on the Ingrid Pandora station. I would think about new lyrics, rhymes, life experiences I could shape into interesting songs. I then started thinking of ways to possibly become a professional singer/songwriter. Move to Nashville? Start gigging around Portland? Join a songwriter's club? Put my music on youtube and myspace? Try out of American Idol and pray they found my timid, not so powerful, average voice appealing and new...? The thoughts began to overwhelm me, so I moved on to Podcasts.

"This American Life" was introduced to me by my cousins, the husband/wife team of Tyler and Sundy Anderson. Tyler told me it's his favorite podcast, so much so that he'd jog to it rather than to music. He says his ipod, along with the interesting podcasts, is the best exercise equipment in which he's ever invested. So, I tried it out. LOVE it. I've even searched for similar podcasts, and found "The Story," which I don't like quite as much as "This American Life," but I do appreciate it. So, I've listened to these for the past little bit. These podcasts have affected me in the same exact way as the music. I begin to obsess over journalism. Now, this one seems a bit more realistic than becoming a successful singer/songwriter, but when you look inside my brain and see exactly what I want to do and what I want to become, you'll see that it's not quite that far off from my singer/songwriter dreams. I've begun dreaming up topics I can create my own magazine off of...or my own radio show. And the radio show thing is crazy...because I have no experience when it comes to radio. But, the dreams are trickling into my brain, one by one, as I listen to these fascinating stories about real-life people and situations. My brain got worn out from all the endless possibilities.

So, today I tried a new station. Short Stories, read and recorded by actors in front of a live audience in a little theater in New York. Classic short stories, excerpts from longer novels, new short stories...all read by professional actors. I'm sure you've guessed it. My mind began wandering in the direction of being a novelist. What short stories could I write? If this lady could write about a woman on a bus, I can surely find something to write about and make it interesting...send it off, get it published in a specialty magazine. Dreams of making it big as a writer began to crowd my brain today, to the extent that the minuscule attention my work does require was put to my own imagination which nearly caused me to forget where I was.

So, you'd think, with all these thoughts pushing each other around within the small space my brain has to offer them, I'd want to leak them all out into a plan...act on them, pursue one of these three dreams (which all have to do with writing/storytelling in some form, I might add) in full force. But, as soon as I step through my front door, the thoughts all drop dead with exhaustion from bouncing off the walls of my brain all day.

So instead, I sit in front of my computer and watch Army Wives, desperately trying to kill all thoughts of "I could write a T.V. show like Army Wives" before they surface and become yet another obsession with no known avenue to pursue them in reality.

My brain is tired. And my scalp itches.