I can't find oblivion. I'm seeking her and yet she eludes me. All that I want is to turn off my thoughts for a while. To truly relax. Not to do nothing, but to think nothing. I cannot remember the last time that I had nothing on my mind; Months upon months ago. My mind has become white noise to me. I can choose, and often do choose to focus on certain things in my life. To think about and dwell on these one or two or three problems for the moment. But even if I choose to focus on none of them. If my choice is silence instead, I can still hear all of my thoughts in the back of my head. The only relaxation I find is not to turn my thoughts off, but rather to turn something else up so that I drown out my own white noise.

There is a line in "The God's Must be Crazy" where one ladie in an office building turns to her co-worker and asks, "Does the noise in my head bother you?"
I used to laugh at that line every time I watched the movie, and yet now I can't seem to turn off the noise in my own head. I watch movies and listen to music, often not because I want to see that particular movie or hear that particular song, but simply because it gives me something to concentrate on that isn't complicated. That isn't difficult or personal.

I keep so many things simmering in my mind. Things that I don't think about perpetually, but that I always come back to. As if my mind were a stove top with three or four ideas boiling up front and a dozen times that staying warm on back-burners; waiting for their turn to boil with thought. It's an endless cycle of moving pots around. More and more often I just want to turn off the heat.

Who needs these thoughts? This dull ache of the chronic ringing in my ears. Is this the "joy" of mature adult life? That we lie to ourselves, saying that we gain some kind of moral victory by juggling a dozen fragile thoughts in our minds? How deluded are we that we embrace this pain as a standard and then how self-righteous are we for condemning all other life-styles, even that of our own children, as "simple" by comparrison?

I need to find a new definition of happiness or of success. That or a new way of achieving this same definition. No suggestions, please; I've already got enough noise to listen to.
Does the noise in my head bother you?