LF Syndrome

I’ve discovered I have LF Syndrome. I’ve struggled with the symptoms for quite a few years now, but didn’t realize there was a term for it until today. It’s Loose-File Syndrome. Basically, it means that the many ‘files’ in my brain that store a broad range of miscellaneous crap keep coming loose and contaminating other ‘folders’.

For example, today, as I entered our Credit Card payment report, I began singing ‘Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree, merry merry king of the bushes he, laugh kookaburra, laugh kookaburra, save some there for me!’

See? The file marked stupid kids songs obviously got loose and dumped ‘Kookaburra' into my ‘accounting’ file. (Yeah, yeah, 'Their coming to take me away! HA HA!')

This is not the only time it’s happened and certainly not the first time today.

One way to evaluate whether you have LF Syndrome (often confused with circular thinking) is to trace your thought process backwards to see if you can find the trigger that made you jump from accounting to ‘Kookaburra’. I tried. I could find no triggers. Not even a co-worker that may have been humming. It just ‘fell’ from one file to another. Obviously a true sign of LF Syndrome.

I have found that I suffer with the circular thinking too, but it’s a little less frustrating since I can usually track my thought process. For example, with Circular thinking, you might be running an internal dialogue/thought process and realize after a few minutes, that whereas you started out thinking about the fact that you’re coming down with a cold, you are now contemplating the latest Tom Cruise stupid stunt. How? How did I get from ‘I’ve got a sore throat’ to Tom Cruise jumping on a couch? Well, to discover that, you have to follow your thinking process backward.

Hmm, Tom Cruise… oh yeah, he was in War of the Worlds. He can be so over the top, good movie though. What did War of the Worlds have to do with anything? Oh yeah, the whole premise is that the common cold virus brought the entire alien civilization to their knees… Ah Ha! My common cold could kill off an entire alien civilization! I wonder if Tom Cruise is part alien?

At least now I have a name for my disorders. It doesn’t make them any easier to bear, but I do have an excuse now for singing random songs for no reason.

“la, la, la, la, la, la, laa, la, la, la, la….” (That’s the Smurfs theme song, in case you didn’t recognize it.)

A.