A strange thing has happened recently.
I can’t seem to turn my brain off anymore.
Not in the “stressed adult lying awake at 2:00 AM thinking about bills and whether I remembered to switch the laundry over” kind of way. That still happens, too, of course. But this… this feels different.
Somewhere along the line, my brain quietly started treating everything like material.
Conversations. Small moments. Weird little observations. The way someone phrases a sentence. The look on a person’s face after they say something they immediately regret. Tiny details I normally would’ve forgotten ten seconds later.
I’ll be standing in line at a grocery store and suddenly think, “That would make a good scene.”
Which probably sounds either exciting or deeply concerning, depending on your perspective.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how something had shifted creatively. What started as a small idea somehow kept growing instead of fading away like most of my ideas usually do. At the time, I didn’t really know what it was yet. Honestly, I’m still not completely sure.
But I do know this – it has followed me around ever since.
I think that’s the part that surprised me most. Usually, when I write something, I can step away from it afterward. My brain moves on. This feels different somehow. The characters keep existing in the back of my mind even when I’m not actively writing. Scenes randomly appear while I’m driving. Dialogue shows up while I’m trying to fall asleep. I’ve caught myself mentally solving fictional problems while unloading the dishwasher.
Which feels like a very dramatic use of dishwashing time.
The weirdest part is that I haven’t even talked about it much. Not really. It still feels fragile somehow. Like if I speak too confidently about it, I’ll accidentally scare it off. So instead, I’ve mostly just kept writing quietly and seeing where it goes.
But I think that silence has had an unexpected side effect.
Without noticing it, I started paying closer attention to everything around me.
The world feels more interesting when your brain is searching for meaning all the time. Not bigger meaning necessarily. Just human meaning. Small things. Real things. The kind of moments that normally disappear unnoticed because everyone is too busy moving on to the next thing.
Now they stick.
And maybe that’s what writing something larger changes more than anything else. Not your schedule. Not your identity. Not even your confidence.
Just your attention.
You start noticing life differently.
Which is beautiful.
And, honestly, a little annoying.
Apparently, even little things like walking down the street, standing in the kitchen holding a sponge, or writing a blog post can now be called “research.”
So… yeah… I guess this is a thing now.
The CJBuzz 