present-perfect

I am a present-person. As in past-present-future, present. Usually, people's first reaction to this fact about me is "That's good! You live in the moment."

This is true. Being in the moment is delightful to me. I love getting caught up in the swirl of now, getting out of my head and into the tangible atmosphere of the fleeting, precious moment. I mean, it's fleeting and precious! It should be savored and enjoyed.

But it's also kind of a trap. Sometimes, there's this sense of being in a (now)cloud - living in a bubble of the present, impenetrable. Whichever person happens to be texting me, whoever happens to be running into me (runningrunningrunning), whatever I'm daydreaming about always gets first priority, no matter how much I need to shut off thoughts and

Just do homework.

I don't really have a good grasp on the OFF switch, and this is irritating when the brain gets all caught up in presently-unsolvable-problems-of-the-day. I think think think think think about it (or maybe it's more appropriate to say it thinks me all out; no agency) even if I can't do anything to change the situation in the moment. It's always about The Moment, and sometimes this leaves me nakedly helpless in the face of The Next One, cause I just did't have enough time to think about that. Also I wonder if this has anything to do with my love of repeating songs over and over - there's probably a warp in my brainfolds.s.s.s.secretly craving repetition of EVERYTHING.

Usually, the thoughts I get stuck in aren't really of great consequence, and I just end up thinking about my schedule for the day/week/semester over and over, carefully etching out the course of a time-map in my mind, and again, and again, where will I be, at what time shall I leave, who else will be there, what will the conversations be like (hm this all sounds very future-oriented, doesn't it), each iteration a little deeper in the grooves - annoying but not life-threatening. But it gets kind of scary when I'm up against a thought-monster bigger than my agenda and I can't stop taking it in. Metaphorically standing there and actually stuck, unable to stop, unable to start cause it's a loop with the same exact information feeding in and back in. Nothing's happening, and nothing else can. It's paralyzing, literally, because the only way to stop is to sleep, and sometimes this doesn't even work (cause remember, no grasp of the OFF switch), or at other times the agenda says I can't afford to cause if I fall asleep now when will all this work be done/it wont/and then you'll be behind the present and you don't know how to deal with that/remember.

How to fix this? In this way the present isn't so perfect sometimes.