What it means to be "Scatterbrained"

Now I'm sure that this is just me getting inside my own head or over-analyzing myself, but I would like to believe that what I'll be talking about in this post is not just unique only to me and that there are also people my age or in similar situations as myself who can relate.

For some time now I have been consistently overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with work, overwhelmed with school, overwhelmed with my social life, overwhelmed my personal life, Just. Overwhelmed. And after thinking about it for a while now I have come to a realization that although this state of overwhelmingness has begun to take over my life, I have been battling it quite efficiently. Also, I think that it all boils down to this: The reason I am feeling this is because of my overly ambitious lifestyle and I may tend to bite of more than I can chew.

The reason I titled this being scatterbrained is that it s exactly how I feel: My thoughts are all over the place my priorities are all unorganized and although I appear to hold it all together, I simply am not and I have been feeling a bit of instability in my life. I always have a lot on my mind and it tends to distract me from completing tasks at hand or it'll make me procrastinate. The way I look at it, it's just a bad habit.

Now this has nothing to do with my happiness because if you know me well enough you know that I am an optimist and try to negate any negativity that tries to crawl its slimy way into my life. But with that being said I do believe it has something to do with my personality. I've always had the habit of being involved with multiple things all at once without even recognizing it and then all of a sudden I'm buried under the pressure of being overwhelmed.

Since I mentioned personality, I have a friend who's quite the recreational scholar and enjoys learning about psychology, the only reason I bring this up is because he basically diagnosed me with my personality type according to the Briggs Meyers test and informed me that I am categorized as a ENFP, whatever that means lol... What does is actually mean you ask? Well, let me tell you! Apparently I am: Extraverted (obviously), Intuitive, Feeling, and Perceiving. Now what significance does that relate to my life and my current scatterbrained situation at hand right at this very moment? After looking up the description of what actually categorized me as this personality type I couldn't help but agree with just about 99% of it. Sure there were things that were off but the majority of the things that popped up that I couldn't help but shake my head in disbelief at how accurate it was. Here are things that I found to identify with the most:



"...can be warmest, kindest, sympathetic as well as demonstrative, and spontaneous.."

"..pleasant and friendly to interact with in the workplace while providing a positive and creative manner with both co-workers and public.."


"..gets distracted, especially if another interesting issue comes along. They also tend to procrastinate..."

"..has a "silly switch," going from intellectual, serious and all business for a while, but whenever they get the chance, they flip that switch and become CAPTAIN WILD CHILD, sometimes appearing intoxicated.." (I think this is 100% spot on and hilarious)

"Friends are what this personality type live for" 

"Occasionally blindsided by secondary feeling causing abrupt hasty decision-making based on deeply felt values that have unpredictable results"

Now especially after reading those, most who know me well enough can agree that the majority of those are spot on or relate to me in one way or another but now you can see why I believe it just the nature of my personality that has lead me to ways that I've been feeling lately.

I keep saying "if you know me" or "those who know me.." but for those who don't let me let you in on a few things that you will learn probably within the first day of meeting me: I really like my music, and not any particular kind, but literally all kinds; I carry a gratuitous amount of positive energy that I would like to believe is contagious but, for some, may even be a bit excessive; I thoroughly enjoy being spontaneous and trying new things (the 80%er in me, I'll Explain that later); And I truly value quality friendships and relationships that I make in my life. Again, all stuff that relates to my personality.

In terms of my music I think that the fact that there usually isn't one hour that goes by during the day (unless I'm sleeping of course) that I am not playing some sort of music or have listened to a song. I listen to music while I'm working out, while I'm doing home work or studying, while I'm completing tasks in my office at work, while driving, while I'm cooking, in the shower, literally everywhere. Music can be overwhelming in a sense that there always seems to be a beat or lyric playing in my head 24/7 which could possibly contribute to adding some clouds inside my fat head causing some serious sensory overload.

As far as my energetic behavior, I consider that part of my optimistic view on life. Regardless of all the negative things that happen within the world it is completely on us to choose how we react to that. For me theres no reason to let something bother you so much that it consumes you completely. This post is a perfect example of me doing just that. Although I feel like theres something up with me Im not letting it effect what I do day in and day out more so I turn to writing to allow me to release all these random thoughts that over populate my head and so far it seems to be working because since I started writing this Ive already begun to feel much better. Anyways, since my internal energy is so natural it is like it gets bottled up inside and builds up so much until it explodes. Referring back to the ENFP personality this is the point where my switch flips and I get a little wacky, this is the point where things can get a little excessive. I also think that this where I tend to procrastinate a lot and allow my tasks to build up, this will usually result from my short attention span from being confined to a desk for hours at a time.

Above I mentioned me being what is called an 80%er. I got it from a book called Let My People go Surfing. If you don't know what it means here is the simplest was to put it: Its a lifestyle that people can adopt that means that you like to experience an abundance of things but only completing it to about 80% before moving on. The reason an 80%er would move on could be for multiple reasons, you get bored, you are satisfied, frustrated, you found a new task, etc.  It's literally a way of living that allows you to keep variety in your life. For me I like to take on a ton of hobbies and little skills and work on them until I am satisfied with what I had experienced or learned. A few examples of some hobbies would be guitar playing and surfing which I gradually started learning over the past two years, skills would be something like reteaching myself script handwriting and using it regularly or forcing myself to read books of interest when I used to hate reading growing up. Either way, my goal is to try something new at least twice per month which really isn't a lot but it sure does pile up after a while, which then can leave me juggling things to see where I want to pick up where I left off.

Friends? I value all of the friendships that I have made over the course of my lifetime and have learned that sure not everyone will remain your friend forever but bask in the moments you have while you can. I do associate myself with a handful of different circles whether it be my boys and home girls from high school, to my bros from Wilkes U, the guys who I can damn near call brothers at this point from Rowan U, Coworkers from various jobs I've held, and now a growing circle of new people from my current school and area.  I like to keep a close network with all the people I have shared some of the best memories of my life with because honestly, whats the point of life if you can't share awesome moments with people, right?? Anyways how this relates is that sometimes I will sacrifice my priorities if I can make some good memories with some good friends and that sure isn't a good mentality to have but sometimes I let Drake get in my head and convince myself that you only live once.

I think at this point it is pretty evident what I need to do to create a path away form this scatterbrained feeling. Priority number one is to actually rank my priorities to add some structure to my approach to work and tasks. For those who actually took the time to read this entire post, thank you. It took me about three days to write this and get all my thoughts in line to be able to get it out on "paper" but I definitely feel much better and hope that this can be helpful for other people in similar situations. Sometimes its just a matter of getting your shit together, Hence, what I will be doing from here on out lol. I do encourage feedback so leave comments or thoughts below but if our going to be immature about it your just inconveniencing readers, so keep it to yourself. Lastly, by no means am I a journalist or professional writer so if your going to critique me on grammar and sentence structure its simply a lost cause.

Written while I was in grad school circa 2015-2017