“Whatcha thinkin…?”

This is a ridiculously hard question for me to answer.

My brain jumps from thing to thing. Constantly. I can focus on tasks and such, if need be, but when I do that, it feels like I think faster to compensate for the lack of jumping around. The energy has to go somewhere, right?

In any case, if someone asks this question, chances are I’m not knee deep in spreadsheets, so my mind is functioning within its normal parameters. This, of course, meaning that my thoughts are playing leapfrog while tossing a ball amongst themselves randomly. It could be anything from physics, a social experience I recently had, elephants, philosophy, a ridiculous situation at work, how a particular machine works, or anything and everything outside and between. Or some rapid succession of any combination of the above.

If they interrupt a thought, how can I answer not knowing what the complete thought actually was? If they do happen to ask between thoughts, do I answer with the most recent one, or do I try to figure out a theme in the last couple of thoughts? Or do I think about the last few and choose the one least likely to result in uncomfortable questions about where that thought came from? I mean, not many people sit around thinking about elephants, but sometimes, they just pop into my head.

9 times out of 10, I’ll simply say “nothing” or “lots of things”, and that is generally satisfactory.