Let me start by saying that I am unequivocally not insane. Well, mostly not insane.
See, taking a few courses online in the fall got me woke, and, in the recent absence of an academic goal I’ve been listening to podcasted lectures and language lessons. I had dropped off Thing2, putting his soundtrack of choice out of my misery so I could listening to the teacher from the German immersion course talk about the weather as I drove to my favorite Wednesday diner for breakfast (yes, I have a different diner for different days of the week).
I was listening to the course mainly to hear a normal pace rather than to learn weather terms again and missed a few repetitions. Then,a sentence about the temperature climbing to 18 degrees Celsius for the third time, a voice in my head that sounded a bit like a recently departed and dearly beloved uncle reminded me (in German) that it was Celsius, not Fahrenheit.
Suddenly another, decidedly British voice mentioned how one of the still quaint but somehow multimillion dollar houses along the country road near Manchester looked suspiciously empty and wouldn’t it be nice to have a normal house. Still another voice with an old-timey Vermont accent answered that there couldn’t possibly be any abandoned (affordable) houses in this neck of the woods, and suddenly I’d missed the first two repetitions of the next sentence on snow.
My working theory is that the voices in my head are an occupational hazard of working alone. One of the voices has mentioned that it’s more of a quirk than a hazard. They may even be advantageous, especially since they come up with tons of great ideas for books and paintings (the bad ideas – like buying the smaller dress size to get motivated to lose the weight — I get to keep the credit for).
At some point, I do need to call a meeting of the minds — someplace nice and outside — and ask if we could please, pretty please bring up our suggestions one at a time because some days the flood of ideas is just noise.