Why did I bring that up? What were we talking about?

If you have talked to me for any extended period of time or say, for an entire conversation at all, then you know I have a problem. That amount of experience with my witty repartee would likely reveal a myriad of deep seeded issues, but I am talking about one directly relating to my style of dialogue.

Many ways to diagnose my issues exist: I get distracted easily, I go on tangents a bit too readily, I struggle to stay entirely on topic, etc. Let me explain what happens in my head as this happens. I think of a relevant anecdote to the story, but always feel like I need to fully explain what made me think of it or why, exactly, it is relevant. Oftentimes I feel the need to provide a full back story including my line of thinking. I wouldn't cite this tendency as the true root of the problem though, merely the causation. The trouble arises when I forget what the background story leads to, or how my little narrative fits into the current situation. To be fair to myself, the conversational complications aren't always totally my fault. I often start my side story and before I can fully tie it in and complete the thought, the person I am talking to starts a new conversational offshoot from my story and it is never completed. Before long we both realize we aren't talking about what we were and have no idea why.

I suppose this is a little bit ADD and a little bit OCD. A combination of my inability to sustain focus at times combined with my need to make everything fit in just right. The other day I brought back a stream of thought that had been interrupted probably a half hour earlier because I suddenly remembered why I had told the story in the first place.

The intended topic of this blog is kind of like one of my side stories. I have been laboring for days trying to remember what made me think to write about it, but still can't quite recall it. I was somewhere between scooping dog doo and mowing the lawn when the thought came to mind so I remember the environment in which it was born... but not much more. I remembered the gist of the idea and fortunately, I started reading a new book the other day that provided me a quote that brought a bit of clarity to my memory on the gist of my intended blog. Oddly, some of the wording in it brought about the remembrance of one of the more ridiculous references I planned to make.

Here is the quote from Timothy Kelly in "The Reason for God."

"A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it."

Now I have spent so many words recounting the background to this blog, that the background has become the blog itself. No, that wasn't intentional. I actually continued writing before realizing that was the case and returning to this point for my conclusion. This happens a lot.