OCD and me

I guess I let the cat out of the bag with my post about "Playing Games" a couple of days ago. Several people (not the least of whom were some family members) pointed out that counting steps is a symptom of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). Playing games with yourself is, too.

This is not the first post I wrote about all this. I remembered back when I first started this blog last year I wrote one called "Brain Lock" that talked about OCD and how it runs in families.

I don't feel weird about having been labeled with this disorder but strangely feel some vindication for the choices I made in my working life. I love to compile indexes, and yes, that picture bothers me. I think it's criminal that the erasers all have uneven wear on them, and the pencils are not sharpened properly. I would also like to have the paper clips moved down so they are centered instead of all pushed to the top. And I'm only kidding about this a LITTLE.

When I compiled an index, I would have at least six different colored highlighters and I would read a paragraph in order to think of all the different ways a person might want to find this information. Then I'd put every possible permutation into the computer on different lines with the page number, and when I would finish a chapter I would hit "sort." The fun really began then, finding all the different places that the same information occurred and consolidating it. I could not put an index down until I had finished it, and sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night with a new idea and write it down to deal with in the morning.

Considering this, I find it odd that I have found labeling my posts to be a chore, because I never thought about them like an index. I have been faithfully labeling them since the day I figured it might come in handy sometime, but I don't really want to go back and do the ones from a year ago. I wonder why that is?

When I get a comment from a new reader (or at least someone who finally leaves a comment), I smack my lips with anticipation as I head over to their blog to find out who this person is. For me, the most daunting part of the blogosphere is its huge size. I have to find a way to visit a small enough number of blogs that I can get my attention wrapped around the process. Sometimes I'll check my followers list and someone has been added, or (gasp!) someone leaves me. I think this is also part of my OCD symptoms, but I get over a loss or check out my new followers pretty quickly.

And I love to find a funny, or quirky, or even stream of consciousness blog that I didn't know existed before, since my world expands with each one. Right now my eyeballs are falling out of my head from having spent the last few hours without looking up from the computer screen. I do have a tendency to go off on tangents now and then...
:-)