The Voices in My Head
Is it just me or does everyone hear a thousand chaotic voices muttering in their head all of the time? The voices in my head mostly judge my every move and offer up opinions on the people around me. The opinions vary as do their insistence on being heard. They speak of the feelings and suspicions they have for everyone in my life or in my near vicinity. Neither friends, family or strangers are off limits. They give me a nod of approval when things work out and sarcastically deride my failures. But mostly, the voices pitch ideas.
Sometimes I feel like a CEO with a thousand ambitious marketers peddling their latest pet project for my approval. I’ve been hearing these pitches for longer than I can remember. They convinced me to create comic books as a child. I also wrote plays and convinced my cousins to perform them for our family. It is uncanny how the voice’s ideas coincide with my interests. As a teenager, they mostly focused on impressing girls and usually just got me in trouble.
I’ve learned over time to tune out the more ridiculous notions and act on the good ones. The biggest problem is that they all talk at the same time. I’ve spent a lot of time training them to take turns but it is a huge effort. Sometimes the voices get excited. They dance around my head like foolish children tugging at my sleeves until I pay attention. And like my children, they bring me joy but I don’t always have as much time for them as I’d like to give.
What I can do is recognize them. I can give them life by writing them down. Maybe some of the ideas that I don’t have time for can find a good home with someone else. Maybe, an ideas merit will be more clear when written down. Who knows one of them might be good enough to buy my freedom so that I can focus on more of its siblings. The best ideas have the potential to come into their own without relying on my support every step of the way.
Here a few ideas that I have had lately.
1:) A virtual currency system that allows developers to sell votes to customers. The customers buy the votes with cash and use them to influence a project in the direction that suits them. This could be used to allow customers to take part in the development process of any digital product.
2:) Using the above virtual currency system, an author could allow readers to become involved in the writing process. During the process of creating an outline for a story, readers could vote on multiple different directions a story could go. It would be like one of the “which way” books that we read as kids except it would have been executed during the writing process.
3:) A research project using the process of creating music to flush out the associated problems and finding their solutions. Everything from band meetings to the recording process would be openly documented for all to see. Any time a problem is identified a written article or a video would be created to explain the solution. Ultimately the entire band history would be one big behind the scenes story tracked on the Internet. I am already actively working on this idea at http://embanded.com.
These are but a few of the ideas I have. I will do my best to list out a few ideas every week. I’d love to hear your opinions on these ideas, especially if you think they suck.! Does anyone else have any ideas they’d like to share?