Sometimes my brain is a bag of cats, and you know if you put cats in a bag (do not do this thing, it’s very cruel, but I’m sure you already know that,) those cats get agitated and start shrieking and clawing and squirming around. It’s all chaos and insanity, and before you know it everything’s scratched up and bleeding and there are headaches. Oh, so many headaches…

And I’m sure you’ve guessed by this point that by bag of cats I’m really talking about ideas, not cats, and at the moment my mind is overflowing. I have too many cats in there with a single ball of yarn, and they’re all clawing and making it really difficult to grab a single thread and just start tugging on it until everything falls into place.

Can’t concentrate… can’t think clearly. Must find a way to go on…

I’m in the middle of finishing an urban fantasy novel that I love to pieces and want to see stuffed between a lovely cover and put upon the shelf, but the other ideas are crowding it out. They’re so loud I can’t hear myself think if I don’t pay attention to the new things.

It’s annoying. I feel scattered, unable to commit to myself, but at the same time I know if I don’t answer the cat that’s screaming the loudest, it will just get louder and louder until I go crazy—er, crazier, than I already am.

I blame the short attention span internet life inspires. Everything is shiny and new and exciting, and I want to touch it all! All of it, all the time, but you can’t touch everything all at once. We only have so many fingers, so I have to find a single cat and start placating it, or the chaos will just continue to grow.

So, my question for you this morning is how do you keep yourself in check? Do you keep yourself in check at all, or do you answer the loudest cat when it screams because you know it’s going to guarantee the best results for a time? What do you focus on when everything is so loud?

I’d love to hear your methods in the comments section below, if you have methods. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you love the chaos, which would be really cool to hear about it!