I am an information junkie. Much to my detriment I am a true information junkie. I love all kinds of facts and surveys and tidbits about pretty much everything. I could spend hours on the computer, reading magazines and looking at books scouring for information that I didn’t know before. Probably why I could be a student at a university everyday for the rest of my life.
I taught university for seven years before I became a full time makeup artist and I would have stayed in it had it not been for the salary that was paid to professors at the time I was teaching. I know had I stuck it out I would have increased my earnings but I was young and restless and jumped at the opportunity to work with a high profile client. In hindsight I’m not sure if it was the right thing to do but it was the right thing to do for me at the time.
I always feel alive and young when walking on a campus. I took a french course at the local university a few years back and found myself sitting in the library reading, not necessarily french, but just whatever caught my eye. I am surrounded now by constant sound stimulation so whenever I can I welcome the quiet of a library or for that matter, anywhere.
Now for someone with ADD tendencies wanting to constantly cloud my head with countless reams of information can get overwhelming. They say that as you get older it’s good to challenge your memory so as to exercise that muscle in your brain that has a tendency to go to sleep at the most inopportune time. So, of course, I have to push that theory as much as possible. And so it leads to sometimes too much information.
In digging deeper into why I have this fascination for having all of this swirling in my head I recently had an aha moment. (Yet more information!) But I think it may have something to do with the fact that if I fill my head with a lot of facts about stuff I won’t have to focus on the information that’s not so easy to focus on. That is, where I am in my life and what I need to face to make my life fuller and richer. All of the facts I have stored in my head have gotten me through parties where I can talk about a lot of things and that helps me to try to fit in when I don’t feel like I’m worthy of being there. The witty, idle chit chat (and a nice glass of wine) helps to put me at ease and not feel so uncomfortable.
I also find myself having a harder time grasping all this information quicker and easier then when I was younger. And now when I can’t effortlessly rattle off a date or a name I am reminded that I am getting older. Doesn’t wisdom come with age? Doesn’t all these years of learning all of this information ease the inevitable? And then I realize the information I need to seek is the way to accept, embrace and enjoy. Important information. Not from a book or a computer or a library but from a good life.