There's a scene in Zach Braff's Garden State where Natalie Portman looks at Zach and says, "You're in it right now, aren't you? That's what my mom always says when she looks at me and sees I'm trying to work something out in my head. You're in it."

I've been in it all morning.

This happens to me sometimes, but with increasing regularity lately. I'll have a massive to-do list, but I can't focus enough to actually dig into any of it. My friend Sara pointed out this morning that my hands are actually shaking, although I've only had one cup of coffee this morning. Granted, it was a Panera Bread house latte, which has a bunch of sugar in it too, so that probably has something to do with it, but still. It's like the thoughts inside of my head are rocketing around like one of those super-hyper-bouncy-bouncy balls.

I'm sure a large part of this is simply my needing to do a better job of regulating my diet, but also there's a sense of needing to mediate thinking up here and doing down here. To conceptualize for a while and then realize for a while. To split my time between living on Mars and living on Earth.

I came back to the apartment to get away from the noise at Borders and Panera Bread, where I like to do my work sometimes, and the quiet is helping me refocus, so maybe I'll be able to plow through a good chunk of that to-do list this afternoon after all. I certainly hope so – but I should do a better job of noting what I'm thinking about when my mind is going 110. So far this morning, I've been thinking about designs of cars, studios made out of converted barns, thinktanks, personal content management systems, essays, interactive versus transmedia storytelling, ColdFusion, PHP, coffee, animation, clothing, comment systems, blogging, movies, plant grafting, music, and that's just the start of it. Maybe I need a sideblog to start making personal notes of that thought stream. I wonder.